The weather played a part, but not the biggest part. Corinna being out of town for a couple of weeks was a bigger deal, and the blizzards didn't help.
Tonight was beautiful, only got down to 40-ish by the time I got home and the afternoon high was in the mid fifties. It was even warm enough to shoot some tags in an alley, though it was muddy and icy enough to keep me from walking everywhere I would if it were warmer or if I could find my freaking boots.
Riding home, though, I crossed a lot of wet streets, wall-to-wall water with deep road-wide puddles. I hate, really really hate, falling down on the bike, and ice has a way of making that happen, so everywhere I saw water running across the street I saw pre-ice for the morning trip back in. I decided to put Corinna's Klondike tires on my bike when I got home, and have since decided against it.
Why would I do such a thing? Well, it's a hassle changing the tires, and if one website is right it will get down to 27ºF tonight but according to another it will barely threaten 32ºF. And tomorrow is Alpha day, so that means an almost fifty mile day when I ride to work, to Heartland and back home. The studded snow/ice tires are great at gripping ice but they pretty much suck at anything else. They're noisy and slow, so slow that when Corinna put them on her bike a couple winters back, I was suddenly dropping her like a bad habit.
I think the compromise I've reached with myself (if I put the studs on, the weather will stay above freezing; if I set the alarm early to take them back off the weather will know and double-cross me with a hard freeze; if I leave my regular tires on, it will be a skating rink out there...) I will not put the snow tires on but I will set my alarm super early so I can do plenty of walking my bike when I hit icy spots. I can get up on the snowy stuff if I have to walk the bike.
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