Brown Season: Snow In The Ditches!

Looking more like late March than mid-December!

 Continuing on with the wacky weather this Winter, we had some pretty Winter-like cold last week which pushed me into urban riding or walking for exercise. Then over the weekend it snowed! We got about an inch-inch and a half maybe. It was enough to shovel, but it was pretty windblown, so it was hard to gauge what we actually got. 

Then it warmed up and melted off almost all of it except the piles and what blew into ditches. I decided on Monday to tackle a country ride since it was to be into the mid-40's and there was pretty much zero wind. That in itself is amazing, but that with 40's and December? I'm going riding. Besides, it isn't like I have to be anywhere right now!

So, I took out the Noble Bikes GX5 to test out the new Karoo 2 GPS unit I got as a gift, (review update this Saturday), and I headed out South of town to see what the snow may have done to the roads out there. My bets were on "not much of anything". 

With a long sleeved thermal Pirate Cycling League jersey and a Bontrager wind jacket over my GORE bib tights and T-6 wool socks I was perfectly set up for the weather. I wore my Northwave winter boots and GORE full fingered cycling gloves. The new Bontrager WaveCel Circuit helmet went on the noggin and Rudy Project shades on the eyeballs. 

Weird light. Close to the Winter Solstice it gets really odd looking around here.

 The roads were either littered with thick, chunky gravel or super-fast, smoothed out dirt and no gravel. But mostly it was still very dry, with hard road beds, and very little in the way of effects from the recent snow. I did come across some shaded areas where there was still a skiff of snow on the roads and a few places were the road was wet enough to throw up some crap on the back end of the bike. 

With the shortest days of the year now here, 2;30pm looks like 8:00pm in the Summer.

Someone already did a ditch burn. Usually I don't see this until Spring.

A pretty uneventful ride, to say the least. I didn't see any animals to speak of but for two farm cats and a couple dogs. It's pretty quiet out there right now and the land is at rest. But I was glad to get out again to enjoy this unusual weather and see the countryside by bicycle again.