Once a biker...

...always a biker. 

After skiing and running on the trails packed by snowmobiles, it was triathlon time. Yesterday, after removing all the spare tubes hanging on the handlebars, I pulled my mountain bike off the hook and rode up to the trail crossing of Harris Street, the place where I encountered the dejected lard biker a week earlier. The track is a bit more packed, and I was able to mostly ride on 2.4" tires in the upper-teens-PSI for pressure. (1) Once I dropped to the low-teens and discovered the ski track was more solidily packed than the tread, I could ride all but the steepest uphills.

Whee!!!

But before that, I met Peter, who was out walking on snowshoes. (2) Well, first I spooked him, walking face down, when I said hello from twenty feet away as I pushed my bike up one of the steeper inclines. With his wits recollected, he commented, "You've got no studs"

"Nope, no ice."

"Even without ice, they can be helpful."

"Oh, I like sliding!"

From there, I happily heard fifteen minutes of stories about how he used to race, primarily on the road, and needed to resurrect his old, old mountain bike from the 1983. That all caps OLD! My first mountain bike was from 1985, and even then most people had never heard of them. I would've told Peter more about it, but he was too much enjoying recounting his old stories for me to edge in my own. I didn't mind. Old, old biking stories are pretty neat, and it's nice to see riding a bike is an experience that sticks with people even once they are "old and slow" but "not fat". His words.

*And another thing, or two. Like Peter, my stories tend to remind me of other stories, so I'm going to try telling those with endnotes rather than attempt to integrate asides with magically smooth transitions. I just don't believe in magic.

1. Decades ago, I attended a Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) course with the title Applied Vehicle Dynamics. It was an extra technical racetrack school, and a handy detail I learned is that, with balance of forces, the ground pressure from a tire is equal to the inflation pressure of the tire, except a slight variation from the casing stiffness. Want less pressure sinking in the snow, deflate the tire and it will squish out more. Fat tires just let you squish more without flatting.

2. "Walking on snowshoes", not "snowshoing", which sounds too much like a unique activity. No, it's just walking, and yet there are whole books assembled about this mythical "snowshoing" activity. My corollary, I want to start the sport of galoshing. It could even be competitive, scored like mogul skiing: time through the course plus bonus points for best splash!