I recently built this new Surly Cross Check (c/o the very fabulous Cherry Cycles) for winter riding. I’d been putting off getting wide, spiked tires until now. Before, they seemed overkill. But here, they make much more sense. And I am determined, to the best of my ability, to ride through the Minnesota winter.
Cali agreed that riding spiked tires also seemed overkill, and she also put it off for too long. She described her first ride with spiked tires like this: “Where once was terror, there is now joy.”
I’m still a little gun-shy riding over ice and slick snow. My tailbone remembers the one day I tried to ride to work after an ice storm. I’d slipped almost immediately. My bike just disappeared from under me. And when I hit the slick ice, my legs shot out and I took a direct hit right in the can. It took no small amount of walking-off to work the impact out of my butt.
I slipped a second time, only a couple blocks later. But this time, when I fell, it was a new kind of pain. Pain beyond pain. A pain that grafts itself into your DNA. A pain somehow recalled on every snowy ride, even with the spiked tires.
But Cali couldn’t have been more on the mark, where once was terror, there is now joy. It may be a cautious joy, but joy nonetheless.
The above images I shot while out on a fabulous ride through rural Southern Minnesota roads. The image below was taken on an icy day, after the New Year’s, in front of the Guthrie Theater. There’s a big red wall which I’ve ridden past many times and thought, I should get a picture there. I set the tripod in an empty parking space. There was a car full of tourists in the parking space just to the south. They were very keenly observing the photoshoot, while their car was idling.
