3 things that make night time bike rides in the winter blackness of Penultima Thule less enjoyable:
#1 realising halfway round your route that, actually the back roads roads are QUITE slippy in places, what with the slush that is freezing again now it's dark.
#2 and that your bike is fitted with Schwalbe Kojak tyres. Which may not be the MOST suitable for these conditions:
#3 two miles from home, after several miles spent trying to maintain enough forward motion to avoid the kind of low-speed wiggling progress that would mean trying to steer on icy slush (and thus crash) but still slowly enough that if you do fall over it won't be excessively damaging, you notice the battery warning on your fancy 900 lumen LED front light is flickering red. But you do not worry. It should have at least 30 minutes more light in it before it--- SUDDENLY TURNS OFF, PLUNGING YOU INTO RURAL DARKNESS JUST AS YOU HAVE REACHED A CLEAR STRETCH OF ROAD AND BEGUN TO SPEED UP. Ohshit. But it's okay! For you have with you a spare, though less impressively bright, front light that will be more than sufficient to get you home, and it is - hmm - sitting in the hall where you left it last week. (Thank fuck there was a bit of a moon showing, just enough to ride (very slowly) the rest of the the way home without ending up in an icy ditch.)
Conclusions:
A. perhaps it is time to buy some knobbly winter tyres
B. battery charging, blah blah, spares more useful when they are with you, what would Scott have done*, eh, etc. etc.
C. the Excessively Expensive Winter Cycling Overshoes bought after two winters of icy icy feet were absolutely worth it, as my toes were pretty much the only part of me to stay warm throughout the exercise.
*something less efficiently than the Norwegians, but with a much stiffer upper lip, obviously
i have not abandoned the uncapitalised life BTW, but i have been writing updates in Open Office as semagic was being weird & it has been fixing them for me
#2 and that your bike is fitted with Schwalbe Kojak tyres. Which may not be the MOST suitable for these conditions:
#3 two miles from home, after several miles spent trying to maintain enough forward motion to avoid the kind of low-speed wiggling progress that would mean trying to steer on icy slush (and thus crash) but still slowly enough that if you do fall over it won't be excessively damaging, you notice the battery warning on your fancy 900 lumen LED front light is flickering red. But you do not worry. It should have at least 30 minutes more light in it before it--- SUDDENLY TURNS OFF, PLUNGING YOU INTO RURAL DARKNESS JUST AS YOU HAVE REACHED A CLEAR STRETCH OF ROAD AND BEGUN TO SPEED UP. Ohshit. But it's okay! For you have with you a spare, though less impressively bright, front light that will be more than sufficient to get you home, and it is - hmm - sitting in the hall where you left it last week. (Thank fuck there was a bit of a moon showing, just enough to ride (very slowly) the rest of the the way home without ending up in an icy ditch.)
Conclusions:
A. perhaps it is time to buy some knobbly winter tyres
B. battery charging, blah blah, spares more useful when they are with you, what would Scott have done*, eh, etc. etc.
C. the Excessively Expensive Winter Cycling Overshoes bought after two winters of icy icy feet were absolutely worth it, as my toes were pretty much the only part of me to stay warm throughout the exercise.
*something less efficiently than the Norwegians, but with a much stiffer upper lip, obviously
i have not abandoned the uncapitalised life BTW, but i have been writing updates in Open Office as semagic was being weird & it has been fixing them for me