Midwest Winter Ice Storm Cycling Stud

A layer cake of death is what the morning DJ’s on Cincinnati’s Q102 radio station called it. Cincinnati is in the midst of getting pounded with 4-6 inches of snow, a half to three quarters inches of ice and then another 4-6 inches of snow on top of that. Combined with Cincinnati’s small snow fighting force, hillbillies with bald tires on their pickup trucks and steep Ohio River Valley streets, “Layer Cake of Death” says it all. With the ice, I thought riding would be either impossible or miserable. Yada, yada, yada. I woosed out and considered shoveling three times to be my workout. A buddy of mine, did not woos out. He sent an email after his mountain bike commute Tuesday morning. The following is not the email. It is completely fictional, any resemblance to actual people, events or mountain bike studs is purely coincidental…kind of.

To: The Best Bike Blog Ever
Fr: Cincinnati Storm Stud
01/27/08

I thought I was in trouble when I spun my mountain bike out my driveway and into the automobile tread-troughs heading down my street. It was soooooper-slippery on the hardpack. I quickly discovered that traction was best when making fresh tracks in the powder, which did not offer much resistance. So I rode sidewalk the entire way to work and really only had to torque the cranks hard in sections where the snowplows had thrown the crusty granola chunks across the sidewalk. It was a fun and peaceful spin through the gently falling snow in the pre-dawn darkness, with cars creeping by on Riverside Drive not all that much faster than I was moving.

I got three "You must be crazy!" shouts from motorists and one woman in a Suburban with outdoorsy good looks shouted "You're a stud!"