Commuting and Bike Lighting

Alas, Daylight Savings Time is over, and it is the season for commuting home in darkness. While there are certain entertaining challenges to this, mostly I find myself having to resist being super annoyed with an ever-increasing number of fellow bike riders.

My approach is perfect, of course. Well, not really, but I think it is OK.

Part one is a good headlight that doesn't blink. I bought a NiteRider Sol 115 lumen headlight three years ago (almost exactly) for $99. In areas where it is truly dark on moonless, cloudless nights (the clouds can reflect a lot of city light back down, it seems) you can see the details of the trail reasonably well. On the other hand, it isn't so bright that it blinds oncoming cyclists.

Part two is to have a couple of those blinking red things on the back. At the moment I have only one because although I bought three; two are broken. The idea was to have the same bracket on several bikes so I could move them from bike to bike easily, but I wasn't expecting them to fail quite so readily. I do not recommend the "ViewPoint Flashback 5 LED Mini Tail Light" - the circuit boards are too fragile.

Part three is to add a yellow reflective belt for enhanced visibility from the rear. I particularly like this one - "3M Scotchlite (TM) Reflective Material Waist Belt" - Home Depot sells them for 11 dollars. When I ride with a messenger bag, I wrap it around the bag and it helps with visibility from the rear. When I ride a bag with panniers, I make the belt as long as it can be and wear it like a sash, which enhances visibility front and rear.


The NiteRider "Sol" 115 lumen + headlight I use

The "the more the better" approach is getting more popular all the time, thanks I suppose to the falling price of good (as in bright) lighting. For the same $99 you can buy 250 lumens worth of NiteRider bike light at Performance. (For only another 50, you can have 600!) While I have no doubt it is wonderful to light up the trail ahead with all that light, most cyclists are pretty poor at aiming their lights so as to avoid blinding oncoming riders and I don't think the manufacturors have spent enough time focusing the light output particularly well, either.

The "headlight on head" approach is also more popular since you can now bolt 250 lumens to your helmet with a self-contained battery (no cord to a battery in your back pocket etc.). This generally is worse for the oncoming cyclists than 250 lumens bolted to a handlebar. The headlight on helmet makes a lot of sense for bombing through forests at night on a mountain bike, but that isn't what we are talking about here.

The blinky light approach has evolved to include the super-bright blinky option. 100s of lumens, flashing! Right in your face! Well, obviously I find this annoying. Am I the only one? Anyway, I don't see how this would "scale" - let's say instead of the relatively small number of people riding home in the dark on bikes we have now that we had four times as many. It would be miserable if half of them had these lights. It's bad enough now as far as I'm concerned.

The retrograde approach of little or no light has yet to disappear - perhaps they are protesting the people with too much light by having none at all? I don't know, but they're still out there, sometimes in pretty dark circumstances.

A couple of nights ago I was entertained by a fellow who was in this last group meeting up with someone in the "power light on head" category in front of me on the trail. The underpowered fellow had an anemic headlight using a CVS brand C battery or two purchased several years ago, I would guess - completely useless for seeing the way ahead (and not much for "being seen" either). He was charging along in the dark going south under the many bridges on the GW Parkway (Mount Vernon) trail near the 14th Street bridge. Apparently he forgot that the trail takes a dogleg left and an oncoming bike with both 100s of lumens on the handlebars and on the rider's head blinded him - he rode right off the trail into the grass, but surprisingly didn't lose control. Apparently embarrassed, he tried to power back onto the trail but then the wet leaves kicked in and he almost crashed as he spun out.

No doubt to solve this he went to Performance (or the equivalent) and bought 1,000 lumens of help so as to join the "more is better" club.

Oh well.

When to Put on New Tires??

Maxxis Re-Fuse 25 mm tires on Traitor Ruben - not as bad as it looks

These tires came with my "urban/cyclocross/whatever" class Traitor Ruben bike, purchased a little over two years ago. Maxxis puts the Re-Fuse in its "road-training" category with an emphasis on "traction, durability and plenty of road miles in any condition." The main emphasis seems to be on anti-flat protection - a "Kevlar® belt and silkworm cap ply combine to provide a tire that Re-Fuses to puncture." (Maxxis, a company in Taiwan, learned their English from the British.) I think the idea is to compete with better known tires like the Continental Ultra Gatorskin and the like.

I ride this particular bike in crummy wet weather and when it is cold enough that it seems simpler to use a bike with panniers to carry all my stuff than a messenger bag. I have a cyclocomputer on it but I don't know where the instructions are, so other than the current speed display, it doesn't provide useful information (like how many miles traveled). Oops! My impression is that I have riden it somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 miles, which is also how far these tires have gone. (I "rotated" them once, putting the front tire on the back and the back tire on the front, since the rear tire wears faster.)

I chose to photograph (above) a section of the tire that is mostly typically, other than that three-pointed ding that looks like something is stuck in it (but other than grit, there isn't). When that first appeared, I took the tire off to see that it didn't go all the way through and otherwise investigate just how far in it went - I eventually decided it looked worse than it was and to see how things went with it. I have no idea what caused it - if it was something sharp, why didn't it hole the tire? Anyway, I think I rode another 1,000 miles after it appeared.

The generally crappy appearance of the tire surface only got this bad recently. Originally the tire had a nice "bumpy" appearance on the entire riding surface, but that smoothed out on the center portion fairly quickly, but this worn appearance with small open ridges into the rubber took a while to develop - as one can see, this gathers grit into the tire surface, but since it is all pretty small stuff, there doesn't seem to be much point in trying to pick it all out. Still, not a good sign.

Anyway, since it is fall and I am going to be riding this thing more, I decided it was time to change to a new set of tires because it seemed likely I would start having problems with these this winter. I try not to spend too much money on tires, so I wait for sales from online vendors like Bike Tires Direct and at some point long before I needed new tires I was able to buy a pair for $65, which seemed pretty good for a folding road tire. (A folding tire has a Kevlar bead rather than pieces of wire - trying to mount a tire with a wire bead at home is bad enough but if I have a flat on the road it's hopeless, so I only buy folding road tires, but of course they cost more.) If I had waited to buy the tires until I needed them (ie, when they look like they do now) I might have considered switching to some other tire, but given the kind of riding I have done and the cost (and since I already own them!), I guess I'm satisfied with putting on another pair of these.

I believe people like Jan Heine write about waiting until they get several flats that they attribute to tire wear before putting on new tires, but I don't want to manage them that way. Perhaps it is using road bike (23-25 mm wide) tires - often something besides overall wear of the tire surface causes some problem that necessitates changing to a new tire. Looking at this Maxxis tire, which hasn't flatted in some time, I'm not really thinking it is worth seeing how much more wear it can take before I spend large parts of my commute on the side of the trail (in winter . . . ).


New Maxxis Re-Fuse 25 mm replacement tires, mounted on Traitor Ruben

So here are a couple of shots of the same tires when new. The bumpy pattern is a little surprising for a tire classed as a road tire, but there it is. I take the Sheldon Brown point of view on tires that for road use, a smooth tire is ideal and that a tread pattern (particularly one this minimalistic) contributes nothing for traction - on the other hand, it is so minimal that I don't think it slows the ride down, either (and anyway, the bumps wear flat on the center line pretty quickly).


New Maxxis Re-Fuse tire, close-up view

The assumption that some tread pattern was better than smooth for traction was a selling point for one tire in the 1890s - the "VIM" tires. If only the woman in the ad below had her bike fitted with VIM tires with their "pebble" pattern, she would not have crashed.


1896 tire with "pebble" tread - magazine ad pushes advantages

The pattern for the VIM tire is quite like the Maxxis Re-Fuse. Perhaps while riding on dirt roads and the like then (and of course this tire would have been much wider) it was helpful.


Ad shows the tire pattern (rather than no pattern at all)

Small Change Where 14th St Bridge Meets GW Trail

National Park Service had a bit of asphalt added to make this better

This is where the "off ramp" from the outbound 14th St Bridge trail/path meets the north-south GW Parkway trail. The NPS apparently realized that for cyclists the narrow "T" intersection was not working particularly well (which it wasn't) and added some asphalt to ease things.

By the way, in the above photo, it isn't that the cyclist (heading left-to-right) is incredibly fast so much as the camera is incredibly slow.


Looking south - extent of added asphalt more visible

It isn't clear if they are done adding turf or if there was some particular reason to add turf right next to the path, perhaps to make things safer/better for bikes that run off the trail?


I suppose they will put it back up, but I liked seeing the "dismount" sign this way

Four Mile Run Trail Flooding

Minor flooding of trail along Four Mile Run under Route 1

This is part of my morning commute - the heavy rain combined with the tides can lead to some flooding at this location, the low point of the trail along Four Mile Run. You can see that earlier the high point was perhaps 2-3 inches above where it is now. There was one time last winter after one of the heavy snows when there was a heavy rain storm that also melted snow and the flooding was probably a foot higher than this - I pulled myself along the fence to keep from peddling underwater. This was a dumb thing to do since bottom brackets are generally not watertight and enough grease was washed out that the bottom bracket started to emit rather amazing creaking noises. Always learning something . . .

Washington Monument on Bike Commute

During my morning commute -

As a result of the earthquake, apparently climbers were going to rappel down the Washington Monument to inspect it; as a result, camera crews came early to get positioned to shoot video and stand-up news interviews. Around noon they were still there . . .

Bad Street Crossing for Bikes

Hoping traffic clears, then he'll finish crossing

This kind of thing is crazy - this cyclist, having seen this intersection before, assumes that the traffic pattern is the same every day. The cross traffic has the green light. Traffic from the left clears and then, usually, traffic from the right. So if you go out as he has done and wait in the middle, it should be possible to get across once the traffic from the right clears (without waiting for a green light, that is).

But what are motorists to think of this? They have the green light, and there you are in the middle of the road. There is no center island. And sometimes the traffic pattern doesn't work out and traffic ends up coming from both directions at the same time, and there you are, in the middle of the road with no place to hide.

Closing Four Mile Run I-395 Underpass

Approaching underpass to I-395 from Shirlington side, Friday commute

After considerable amounts of rain overnight, Four Mile Run apparently flooded the bike path underpass for I-395.  By the time that I arrived on my commute, around 7 am, I think the flooding was already gone but I chose not to investigate and rode around (the old way, over 395 on the pedestrian bridge and down Martha Custis).

In the evening the barriers had not been "officially" removed but someone had pushed them aside.

Knack Cycling for Everyone - Book Review

Cycling for Everyone - A Guide to Road, Mountain, and Commuter Biking by Leah Garcia and Jilayne Lovejoy (Knack, 2010) is lovely to look through and reflects considerable effort, but I'm not sure that it is "the ideal new resource for anyone looking to get introduced, or reintroduced, to today's world of cycling" (as it says on the rear cover).

Amazon has a "look inside" link for its page for this book so you can get a fairly good sense of what the book is like.

What's good:

* More than 400 photographs - it must have been a major effort just to figure out and produce all of these; it's a fun book to page through.

* Certainly introduces at a high level many issues connected to cycling.

* Presents some topics quite well when the book's format (that seems to be part of the Knack series) provides the right amount of space.

What's not-so-good:

* Typically one photo is all that is provided for any particular issue, even for the description of maintenance activities where a sequence would be more helpful. In this regard, the extremely structured format of the book works against it.

* The highly structured format for each page also means that there can't be much detail written about any particular subject - for the most part each subject is dealt with in two facing pages.

* Despite being an introduction to the subject, it often reads as though you already know something about the subject - in the summary of what makes a road bike a road bike, it says "uses 700c wheels, caliper brakes, and skinny smooth tires" - skinny smooth tires is clear, anyway.

* Doesn't answer many "why" questions. Again, due to the limited space for text, much of what is provided are descriptions without explanation.

* The glossary is too short and misses many terms used in the text without explanation, and is the one part of the book with no images. In the text one is told to avoid potholes to avoid getting "pinchflats" which are just one item not in the glossary (or the index, for that matter).

I concluded that there is far more to cycling than I had realized since it doesn't turn out to be possible to provide anything like a comprehensive introductory guide to the different types of cycling (mountain, road, commuting) in a single book.

I was somewhat amused by the subjects where the authors chose to provide additional information - since they live in Colorado, they are quite a bit more into mountain biking than commuting by bike so unlike most subjects that must be dealt with in two pages, you get "terrain tips - part 1" and "terrain tips - part 2" (or four pages!) on handling rough riding on a mountain bike. (The coverage of bike commuting in this book is weak, when you get down to it.)

And they are pretty much satisfied with the modern buy-lots-of-crap-and-keep-corporations-afloat approach to cycling - this is most noticable in their discussion of winter clothing, where wool sweaters you might already own are not mentioned - the models are attired in hundreds of dollars of special cycling clothing. (Don't get me wrong, I happen to take that approach too, but I'm pretty sure it isn't the most cost effective and I sure didn't start that way.) I think this reflects a lack of enthusiasm for true beginning bike commuters - mountain biking is more fun.

Summary - it's a pretty book to look at, and has it's tidbits of useful info here and there. It isn't a particularly useful comprehensive introduction.

Annual Dillons Bus Photo Op

Dillons bus driver demonstrating his "split the lane" right turn technique

This is just lazy driving, in my view. But I only drove a city bus for 12 years so what do I know.

Anyway, as with a year ago when I saw some less than excellent driving from these people, I took a photo and then I wrote an email:

This was taken with a cell phone camera, so the quality is not terribly good. This is proceeding west in Independence Ave SW, just approaching the intersection at 7th SW. This would have been around 4:30-4:40? Today. I don't wear a watch.

This is a common practice with Dillons buses making this turn - splitting the two right lanes. Here you have a photograph illustrating what I see often enough. It's just sloppy and dangerous - and completely unnecessary! This bus is turning into three lanes, so if the bus was entirely in the right lane on Independence it would be no problem to swing around the corner even if the nearest southbound lane has a vehicle in it. The bus ain't that long.

The only reason for this approach is to make it simpler to intimidate pedestrians by having four-five feet to turn in the direction of the crosswalk to the right without actually going into the crosswalk. I grant you, waiting until the crosswalk clears if the bus stays patiently in the right lane, where it belongs, isn't much fun - but what this driver is doing is putting the problem in the lap of everyone in two lanes behind the bus. Do you want your buses sideswiped? This is asking for it.

I was on a bicycle, by the way, and had plenty of room to ride right by (on the left) and from my personal perspective this is great since he blocked traffic and I got on down the road. But otherwise it's awful.

The last time I took a picture of a Dillons bus - the "open the door with a full lane open to the right so the passengers can get run over" technique

Best Bike Parking - for Some

Four spots set aside for three police bikes

In my office building on Capitol Hill, we are protected by federal police. This parking lot has 24 slots for bicycle parking, half in the center and half at one end of the garage. Through some sort of unspoken tradition, the bicycle commuters know who parks where. This has been upset by the police taking four of the 12 spots near the center in order (at least for now) to park three bikes. (One of the bikes is made by "Smith & Wesson" - well known for making bikes! Stop or I'll shoot you with my bike!) This has completely upset the bicycle commuter ecology right in the middle of the prime riding season. (Well, ok with the heat wave, maybe not entirely prime in the usual sense.) So the police have three bikes on the four closest most convenient slots and the staff who are bike commuters have crammed ten, eleven, etc bikes into eight slots to see how much paint they can scrape off each others' bikes.

These police bikes are locked up with the most absurd chains and padlocks - you would think they were locking them up in some high crime area and not in a garage guarded like a fort.

PS - I thought perhaps this gift of parking places to the police might put us out of compliance with the DC "for every ten spots for cars, one for bikes" law but they count the slots on bike racks in front of the building. 95 percent of the car parking is in a garage and 75 percent of the bike parking is outdoors. Oh well.

Unusual Bike Commuter Hazard - a Black Bear

Newspaper article reports that a Florida man was removed from his bike by a black bear, managing however not to suffer any serious injuries.


Something that might be more frightening than an angry motorist

Voice of America Covers DC Bike to Work

A good set of photographs from this month's Bike to Work day in Washington DC is on the Russian language VOA site - scroll down and the slide show launches. Knowledge of Russian not required.

As associated article in Russian isn't much for non-Russian speakers, but Google translate will render something like (but not exactly like) English - certainly it is understandable, if quirky.

Often in machine translation, the story becomes more dramatic in the telling, such as, "Move along the wide roads designed for a more dimensional and fast cars with gasoline engines - it's not only scary but dangerous. Therefore, local authorities began to pay greater attention to road safety. Cyclists immediately responded to these steps, rushing into the streets en masse."

I will be on the lookout for these cyclists storming the streets of DC.

(Not even slightly connected with bicycles, the translation business reminds me of the infamous Time article about Madonna's interview supposedly translated from English to Hungarian and back - which turns out to be an urban legend.)

Bike to Work Day, 2011, Arlington VA

Inadvertantly part of a "new rider convoy" near National Airport on the GW Parkway bike path

Since I pretty much bike to work every day, I am never quite sure what to think of Bike to Work Day - at least this year the weather was mostly good (in the afternoon it clouded up and at least a few drops of rain fell some places). The number of riders for this "event" looked pretty impressive, but the fair weather aspect of this is fairly apparent when compared to earlier in the week when it had been rainy.


In the photograph the barbed wire is more noticable - normally I am looking forward I guess and don't even see it.


As riders get into the District, the group disperses

I tried to take some other group photos of "convoys" but my camera had focus issues. Oh well, maybe next year!

Park Service Says, "Dismount!"

Sign added to bike trail April 7, just before the governement was expected to close

I think this is very odd - Thursday morning two trucks of U.S. Park Service personnel were pulled up along the bike trail to install this sign. Is this really important?

The southbound cyclist, before this sign, would arrive at a stop sign and one that also demands a dismount - I have never seen anyone do so. The trail crossing is zebra striped and looks like a cross walk to the drivers leaving National Airport - the traffic is one way, from left to right in the picture. What generally happens is that cyclists slow, the cars slow, sometimes the car stops and wave the cyclist or cyclists on, sometimes not and then the cyclists stop.

Providing a notice (now two!) that dismount is required just makes cyclists into scofflaws in this instance. There are, I think, some locations where dismounting is sensible, for example the crosswalk across S Shirlington Rd after going under I-395 on the bike trail. The crosswalk has lights to attract attention of drivers that are activated by a button and it seems reasonably for cyclists to dismount here (and a lot safer).


Couldn't they have planted more trees instead?

Four Mile Run Floods Bike Path

Taken with new phone's camera - slightly better than previous phone camera

Four Mile Run went up over the bike trail due to heavy rain, leaving debris on trail. I stopped and pushed the worst of it off the trail - although not so clear I did anything in this photo! I was "sweeping" with a board that had floated onto the trail, so not very neat. Still, I got the big bits and pieces off the bike path.

Since this is right around a curve, someone could have a problem if they came around the corner at a moderate speed into this the way it was.

The GW Parkway Bike Trail Detour - Enhanced!!

Looking up - new asphalt "speed bump" covers the previous ruts

So, I had this email address for a fellow at the Park Service who is a manager for the GW Parkway and I wrote him over the weekend saying that the bike path detour seems rutted and dangerous - I got a reply today and he said he would send some fellows out to look at the situation although he wasn't sure if the Park Service had jurisdication. I wonder if this is the result . . .

Anyway, in order to solve the rut problem, which I guess someone thought was the most important, they have put in soft asphalt "speed bumps" with nice yellow stripes on them. The one on the top end is already (after less than a day) a wreck since the narrow bike tires have cut through it, creating a mess. The one at the bottom seems to be holding up better - assuming that is what one wants.

The main virtue of the previous iteration was that it was a wide detour, but that has been "corrected" with a new fence - now it is narrower. I can't imagine why they did that. Perhaps they will come back and fix it some more??


Rider prepares to navigate soft aphalt bump at top

This isn't one of those "instead of making it better, they made it worse" situations but more like "instead of making it better, they made it different - and still bad."

Previous Post on this topic.

Poor Bike Trail Detour, GW Parkway

I took some pictures of this yesterday and Washcycle has a blog entry using them.


New "cut through" detour near south end of 14th St Bridge

The photo doesn't convey the difficulty of riding this particularly well - the construction people followed the natural contour of the hill so the lower section is shallow and then it quickly gets pretty steep for most cyclists. When riding up this, about one in four cyclists gave up part way through and dismounted. Even though it is quite wide, many riders have difficulty focusing on both the difficult surface straight down and other riders and pedestrians.

In the photo above, the old-timer recumbent rider was able to pedal straight up the incline; the other fellow ahead of him slowed down and stood up to make his way to the top. Of course, when he stood up to pedal he immediately slowed down and the recumbent is practically running into him.


Loose gravel at bottom - similar ruts are at top

In addition to being steep, there are these ruts to navigate successfully.

My thought is that if they do nothing else, there should be "walk your bike" signs (much as I don't like those). I contacted the Park Service management for the GW Parkway here to suggest there was a problem at this location that needs correction or people may well get hurt. No reply so far.

Cold Ride Blues

Washington DC is south of the Mason-Dixon line and is supposed to be warmer than this in winter, or so it seems to me. Even last year when it snowed quite a bit, there was more up-and-down variation in the winter temps than this year when it seems as though it has been more consistently below freezing at night (and during the morning bike commute). I am tired of it. (Poor poor me . . . )

Winter Biking Primer from Streetfilms on Vimeo.

Anyway, then I found this video (above) on another local bike blog and I'm afraid it had the opposite of the intended effect for me - instead of seeing how easy riding in winter is, I was reminded of various aspects of winter riding that I have been finding annoying, like how long it takes to get all the winter stuff on and off. The "model" in the video has her clothes put on in double time yet it still takes her a while to get on all the layers. Oh for summer and a pair of shorts, a shirt, socks and shoes . . . And not to mention dealing with ice hither and yon on the bike trails.

Of course, it could be much worse for clothing, like this getup my daughter wore when we lived in Russia more than ten years ago ~



Is there a child in those clothes??

More Ice on Bike Trails

Taken this morning, on the way to work - looking south although I was heading north - I just liked the sign (note icicles) and it was a place to prop the bike for the photo. Near Route 1 around the south end of Nation Airport. Entire trail covered in ice.

Trails were covered in bumpy ice with temp hovering around freezing. As far as I am concerned, impossible conditions if you don't have studded tires (which this bike does). However I did ride along briefly with a guy who was managing without studded tires - but I was able to go quite a bit faster so I left him behind.

At the overpasses I simply walked the bike for 100 yards or so - the ice was too much on the downhill sides even with the studs.

The trick (with the studded tires) is to ride at a measured pace - no sudden braking, no quick acceleration. Gentle . . . . . easy does it. Where there is trail with grass on both sides, one can get up to 10-12 mph and ride off onto the grass if problems arise. Some of the way I simply road on the icy grass, since then falling is no longer an issue - but it is more exertion but requires less focused attention.

Wouldn't want to ride like this all the time!!

It has certain fun aspects - near Shirlington several people walking their dogs simply gawped - "if I'm falling down with my boots, how can he ride . . . a bike?" is clearly what they are thinking. Well - it's (stud) magic! Ya just gotta be careful not to push the boundaries.

Winter Commuting & Studded Bike Tires (Again)

So, Tuesday night it snowed again, setting up a slick commute (so to speak) for Wednesday morning, and a bit beyond as it turned out. In an earlier post I said I didn't see much point in studded bike tires, but I realize now I was thinking mostly of heavy snow conditions like we had last winter (where the problem was pushing through snow and not ice at all).

Tuesday's freezing rain followed by an inch or so of snow set up conditions where bike tires with studs are pretty good to have - and since I have a set, I used them (although I took the picture above of some other rider during my commute - the pictures below are of me + the bike).



This is an old Giant that belonged to one of my sons - I have an extra set of wheels that I equipped with some not-very-expensive Nashbar-branded Kenda tires that have studs. They work great in icy conditions. In the image below you can see, if you look closely, some of the studs.



It got up to 38 (F - say +2 C) during the day and it was windy, so much of the snow melted by the time I rode home, but there were enough icy patches that I didn't mind having the studs. Really, it is on icy spots (rather than on snow of any depth) that the studs are amazing - it is possible to proceed at a decent stable pace, say 12-14 mph, and not feel any slipping, although one needs to be sensible - the studs aren't so numerous as to be relied on for quick stops, for example. When traveling on dry clear pavement one can hear them clicking away and I assume getting slowly less pointy (flattened out). If you brake hard on dry pavement you can simply pull individual studs out of the tires.

So Thursday, having decided that mostly the trail was clear, I went back to my cyclocross bike (no studs). I reduced the tire pressure to 50 pounds per square inch but that does zero for grip on ice. Using the cross bike meant lots of speeding up, then slowing down when I had to go over icy areas plus making sure I was paying attention 100 percent of the time so as not to end up on ice at the wrong speed. On the way home on a overpass made of concrete (which thaws much more slowly since the jurisdictions where the bike trails are don't do anything to speed that up), I screwed up and fell, dinging my left shoulder pretty good but not breaking anything. My head hit the left concrete sidewall of the overpass but not too hard and anyway that's what helmets are for, to keep one from getting hurt (and it worked). Nonetheless, OW!

So I'm a little embarrassed, frankly. I could have and I guess should have ridden the "ice bike" with studs one more day in order to avoid this. It would have been 9.5 miles of studs and heavy mountain bike on clear pavement and some 100s of yards on snow and a little slippery, dangerous ice. And I'm pretty sure I would not have fallen ~ hmm. Have to think about this . . .



I should have spent one more day on the studded tire bike.