Mas snowfatcold

I met Timothy at Please&ThankYou for a cup, and for me one of their excellent egg bagels, before we headed out on the early edge of our next snow-ing, billed this time as a potential storm between 1" and 12". Yes, you read that right. Anyway, it was snowing.

Timothy brought his Orbea 27.5+ bike to try in the snow for the first time, while I was again on the Mukluk, whose tires were I'm guestimating at 8psi or so. We plowed the bumpy trail our the Riverwalk towards Shawnee. In this section, Timothy was stronger than I and I think having more fun than I. Pushing the knobby Nates over long flat sections (long is relatively here) is not particularly enjoyable. As we began to explore the Shawnee/Portland river bottoms area the Nates sprang to life, so to speak. Noodling and Toodling around at 3mph with an extra grippy footprint seems to be what the Mukluk is made for, while Timothy was consistently losing grip with his mild knobbed 3" tires (sorry, don't remember make). We explored a bit until Timothy's cleats were entirely frozen up. After fortunately retrieving a missing coffee thermos, we wended through the woods a bit more and began to head back. At the flood wall under I-64 I borrowed Timothy's pump to boost my pressure a bit and basically tore the valve stem inner stem off (whatever it's called), but low and behold the tire held air. I assume there was some frozen stuff in there aiding my cause. We trudge back in increasing snows and wind, eventually popping over to River Rd. to avoid the snow drifting o the Riverwalk. A beverage and hot food melted our frozen edges and topped off a fun day. This made for the 3rd snow ride in a row, all with different shoe combinations. The zipper on the Wed boots (my favorite broke, begetting the Oboz boots, begetting the new Shimano bikepack boots, all with weaknesses.  Maybe I'm the weak link. I hate cold toes.

Snow Ohio River scene.

Frozen face selfie. Googles this time, but same hat.

Portland/Shawnee river bottoms. This area had scene much ATV/truck/4x4 activity, making for ruts that Timothy found difficult with his level of tire grip.

Drive home not so rosy for the Mukluk wheels. Even worse (not shown) was the frozen front mechanism on the rack. I engineered a questionable solution with a small bungee. I got home in tact, so I guess it was good enough.