work blows...

...me outside.

This is last week, Feb 15th, after the big snow:


Rode five miles to the base of the canyon, skined up...


...then made my way up here:


Fresh tracks on the AT. (It wasn't that great.)

Actually, snow conditions were horrid. After the initial 4-5 inches of snow it warmed up a bit and what came next coated everything with a kind of free-on-impact rain/snow mix. So, you have to imagine this...


...as not pretty fresh snow with some tracks through it, but frozen white ice as hard as sculpture.

Later that week I tried to ride for a while on top of the snow's frozen crust. It worked okay...until my front wheel broke through the crust and I face-planted over the handlebars. That was the end of that.

As for riding with skis on my back... I'm not going to lie, I felt pretty hardcore riding through town with that get-up. But it was also windy, so besides nearly freezing my nads off (external genitalia...who came up with this stuff?) I was predictably, and dangerously, blown about the road. Especially when crossing freeway overpasses and that sort of thing...experiences which left me thinking the whole thing maybe wasn't such a good idea.