Just last week I was talking about how we have had the snowiest winter I can remember in a long time here in Northern Illinois. But I knew then that the writing was on the wall - or more literally was on my iPhone’s weather app - warmer weather was coming. But I still didn’t expect what we actually got.
It’s been a little warmer than I expected it to be over the past week. Earlier predictions expected highs in the upper 30’s (F), and so I expected a long, slow thaw. What we’ve actually been getting is highs touching up into the low to mid-40’s, particularly as the week has been going on, so daytime temps that are a little higher than expected. More importantly, I think, we haven’t been having the low temps at night that we were before - we’ve had a few nights over the past week where temps stay above freezing for most of the dark hours, which means melting continues - albeit more slowly - through most of the wee time.
This has led to a week of riding in which every outing encountered something different. With the sheer volume of snow and significant drifting from the north winds over the first two-thirds of the month the township road crews had struggled to keep up. This meant that, on east-west roads in particular, the snow hadn’t been cleared from the pavement. It’s not that the roads themselves hadn’t been opened up - but the plows had not gotten back to take the last few inches of very hard-pack off of the asphalt.
That’s not a big deal when it’s 25° outside - the layer of snow and ice is little different than tar and chip at that point from a cycling perspective. It’s maybe a little bit slipperier, but it’s textured enough from automobile traffic that there is still good area to get gription on. But as the temperature goes down...? Well, you get this:
Patchy crap
Everything on the roadway that was white is now presenting more in shades of gray, and it’s not the useful, hard surface that once presented. In patches it opens up, and you have to steer for those where they are offered, because you need the traction to get up momentum for the next patch. In the picture, if you look up ahead of me, you can see that what I’m approaching is whitish material covering the road from side to side. It’s maybe a 16th of a mile, maybe even less than that - but it was soft and thick, pushing against the front wheels while offering little purchase for the rear.
The strategy is to hit it going as fast as possible, get into my lowest gear just prior to entering, and work my ass off to get thru. Then wash, rinse, repeat as the next one approaches.
I’m pleased to say that it worked. I did have a couple of moments where I had to manually assist the front wheels just a touch, but I didn’t have to get off the trike, which I always feel is a win.
And then the next day was different:
Where did it all go?
Where there had been patches of slushy crap to contend with across portions of roadway, now there was just wet. This was true even on the previously neglected east-west roadways - what little slush that was left on tarmac was off to the sides, where it had escaped from vehicular assault, and that was easily and safely avoided:
Open Road Baby!
While all of this was wonderful for riding on the open road, none of it seemed to apply to my driveway. My cousin very generously clears out our drive throughout the winter, and he has been especially hard-tasked with that this year. His skills with the front-loader on his tractor are prodigious and impressive. This means that he takes care to clear a path without digging into the gravel surface of our drive, which would damage it. But this also means that, as the temperature increases, my driveway becomes a far worse version of the slush-patches I was describing before:
It’s just… yuck.
Since this is where I begin, there isn’t room to spool up any speed before hitting it, and even if I did, it would generally be hopeless. My strategy here to start with, when the warming trend began, was to give it a try and then, when I got stuck, walk the trike to the end of the driveway. By day two I had given up on giving it a try and just commenced with the walking. This meant that each ride began and ended with walking the trike about 180 feet each way. Ultimately, then, 360 feet of each of those rides in Cyclemeter is really just a lie.
Oh the humanity! (Yes - this is definitely a first-world problem)
Well - that was until yesterday. I wasn’t sure if I was going to get out for a ride yesterday, but when the high temp started to roll past 40° - especially with a 2-3mph wind (which might as well be no wind at all out here) I was just unable to stay inside. The driveway was still mostly choked with ice, but there were patches of gravel peeking through, so I decided to give it a shot, and actually did manage to traverse it both on the way out and on the way back in. It wasn’t pretty by any stretch of the imagination, but it was possible.
And now today’s high is projected at 52° sometime around noon, but with wind kicking up by early afternoon. We are wrapped in fog right now, but that’s supposed to clear up over the next hour or two. Seems like it would just be a waste not to take advantage of that window of opportunity if/when it presents itself, doesn’t it?