I don't think I had this blog a few winters ago when I finally went on my first mountain bike ride in the snow with my friend Mike aka Dingle (we can only call him that because he's literally a rocket scientist). We rode Hartwood Acres, generally speaking my favorite park to ride bikes offroad in the greater Pittsburgh Area. Friends at Dirt Rag Magazine and Bicycle Times are responsible for carving out a good number of the single track (if not all of it, and certainly for marking them all and mapping them all out, a wonderful feature. We thought it'd be a good idea, there was certainly plenty of snow that winter. But there was, like, too much. It was the year I got really into hiking in snowstorms. It was actually more funny than anything, and definitely considered "riding" rather than you know, just riding (the quotation marks are the key, there). Anyway, the point is, it snowed this weekend, finally, after a winter of 38 degree days of gloom and rain or gloom and dry, freeze-thaw and endless mud and ice. It snowed and I rode in it.

And. It. Was. Awesome. I took it a bit cautious, not wanting to break a limb on my first ride in the woods in months, and mainly did hill repeats. I bumped into my friend Jordan and chased him around until he noticed me, and we made tentative plans to ride actual single track on Monday morning before work (this was Sunday). Yeah, well, Monday was like 40 degrees and the snow's all gone and today it rained so there was my winter riding wonderland. More importantly, though, I'm not scared about riding in the snow. Commuting in the snow, there's a lot of ice patches and puddles, and if you slide and crash you can get hit by a car and typically fall right onto pavement, which I'm used to and don't *mind* per se but like to avoid. For Valentine's Day, E. switched over my break pads on my single speed, which is a great bike for riding in the woods, so maybe now that I can stop I'll actually take it more places than to work. Speaking of which, though, I made some strawberry chocolate mousse and we have a big bottle of beer to share waiting down stairs and both volumes of Kill Bill* to watch, to get me pumped for P90X, which starts Thursday. I will report back, obviously. Rock climbing resumes on Friday.


I think we're probably going to watch Princess Bride, sshhhh...There's still fighting in that, though!