the anatomy of a winter bike mk?!?

This winter bike of mine has had almost as many versions of itself built up as there are types of winters in Southern Ontario.

I think I may have hit upon a good set up for this year.

I invariably use cheap as dirt plastic pedals with just bushings. Why? Winter, its and and salt, is very tough on bike parts and I don't care to ruin expensive pedals. Plus, I tend to push harder on the pedals - snow makes for more high torque launches than bare pavement - and often after one winter the pedals are bent. These cost about $8 or so, maximum.

I raided the parts room at the shop and bought some old stock - a Blackspire chainring (32 tooth) and an ancient old crank. I also used some spacers and long ass chain ring bolts to centre the ring better with the rear cassette. A chain keeper of some sort keeps the chain from hopping under shifts. The system is a 1x8 set up now. I never (never) used the large ring or granny gear ring in the winter so I decided this time around to just do away with the silly things. Why the Blackspire ring? I am hopping that the fact that it seems seriously overbuilt compared to the Shimano stuff will make it last longer. If not, I will source a dedicated single speed crank/chain ring combo in the spring and see how that lasts.

Out come the frankenfenders and Continental Winter Contacts. No studs yet. They come into play later in the winter if we get an icy one. I have two sets - one from Finland and one from Germany - should the need arise.

Disk brakes because I like stopping. I have run rim brakes in the winter and hate them. I have heard people complain about disk brakes in the snow but these have given zero issues. They are filthy, dirty, covered in crap, and stop like crazy in all conditions. The pads are about to enter their third winter. There is no evidence of bad wear on them yet. The only catch is that no petroleum based product had better touch the things. Fair enough. And easy enough to do too. These brakes are Avid BB5 brakes - dirt cheap, but very effective.

Splash guards and frankenfenders abound on this bike. I also go crazy with the rust check spray. I hose down various moving parts and the bottom bracket areas liberally with the stuff. That is one of the reason why this BB is about to enter its 4th winter without any gritty grinding sounds. Still runs smoothly.

Another view of the mud flap and frankenfender goodness.

Some old good stuff. 1998 XTR Rapid Rise. Some hate it, but I like it. Works well. Shifts perfectly. Should last a few winters before crudding up beyond help. I have given it its first massive coating of rust spray which will help keep corrosion off and things moving - gotta love a rust preventative which also lubes. Speaking of which, I use a wet lube - White Lightning I think - which will last a whole week in the winter of daily use. Not bad. Phil's Tenacious Lube lasts less than one day and basically just makes a mess. Waste of money.

There you have it. The bike as a whole. Parts were raided off of my old (now sold) Specialized S-Works bike to make this beast more beast :) There will be no rack this winter due to a stripped frame mount (oops) and me getting a courier bag later this season. Also, expect another bottle mount to hold my Specialized Keg with a do everything tool kit to be located on the seat tube. It is the kit I carry with me everywhere on my Sutra.

So there you have it, this winter's set up!

Most of our snow has melted as of these pictures being taken. Last night, there was lots. Since I took the pictures 15 minutes ago, a couple cm have fallen with no end in sight.

Where is that pesky coffee pot?

a picture of much importance

Why is it important? What delights are mysteriously held within? After all, it is just a picture of blue sky, trees, a field, a bit of brown grass...

Wait! What? Brown grass you say? Could it be?!?

Yes. Yes it could.

Spring just might be around the corner after all.

I wonder if it will snow tonight...

he stalks the yard in winter

more from the 17

This one gives some indication as to how high the pile of snow is at the edge of the trail. It is not easy to see in this picture, but from the ground by the edge of the snow bank up to the "horizon" is straight up. That is a good whack of snow.

A bit of tonight's very blue sunset.

The flare centered on the front fender is one of the cooler flare patterns I have seen. I think I am about ready for spring though. Tonight was cold with a capital c let me tell you. Brrrr.

winter wimpy

I am reminded once again of winter wimpies this morning as I trudge about on my bicycle through the snow. Beyond a few stalwart souls pressing on through winter's wet, I encountered no one until I arrived at my resting place in coffee mecca. There was no where to sit.  The place was, in fact, packed.

There are two kinds of winter wimpies in my experience.

One refuses to acknowledge the existence of the snow season and moves from one heated environ to another, living in a state of denial and misery. This morning has provided ample evidence that lots of people continue to fall into this category of winter wimp. At one point, I belonged to the ranks of the miserable winter wimp, but I got over it and remembered that I do, in fact, live in Canada and had best get over my loathing of winter and get on with it, whatever "it" may be.

The other brand of winter wimpies are weather limited. I fall into this category. My limit is -20. Once it falls below that, my interest in the great outdoors is transformed wholesale into an interest in the great indoors. Sadly, what drives me outside in warmer weather does not go away simply because the temperature has become somewhat uncivilized by my definition of the term. I just lose all interest in engaging in outdoor activities.

In short, I go bananas!

Thankfully, lulls in the winter madness do occur and the outdoors regains its allure.

keeping the shiny side up

There are times when being Canadian is a real treat. One of those is the winter time. Many people who live here, myself included at times, despise the winter but the trick is to find something to do in the winter that is fun and then do it.

I call the realization that this is the case the "Well duh!" moment.

Enjoy the winter, and have fun, or be miserable. Decide. Well duh.

Which brings me to the subject of today's post.

Our employer (my wife and I work for the same employer) decided that it was too nasty out to come to work and closed for the day. The wind chills locally are reaching to -40 Celsius. Kind of chilly. This left us with a day to use for our own amusement.

So naturally, we went on a date.

And then, we went drift surfing in a winder wonderland.

Definitely a good day to keep the shiny side up. Mind you, aren't most days?

powerful

did not make the cut for the post earlier today, but I do like it

well done waterloo

Waterloo did a cool thing.
A very cool thing.
Really.

We are blessed (no sarcasm) with improving parking in the Uptown for bicycles. In fact, as I have mentioned before in this blog, part of the parking structure for cars is given over to bicycle parking. This is a new thing for our area (we are not Amsterdam...). The part that is for bicycles has clear signage, is easy to get to from the street, sidewalk, and a path, and has this nifty cool thing there now:

Yep, you guessed it, the city has installed a work stand.

Tools are on aircraft cable and located inside the tower tube, there is a spot to hang the bike, and an air pump.

Colour me impressed.

Keep up the good work Waterloo (all we need is some action on the street redesign that puts the proposed bicycle infrastructure between the sidewalk and the parked cars, not between the parked cars and the moving cars as was officially proposed.)

As an aside, men's clothing is boring. Can I have a men's version of this sweet tankie?

And one last thing. My 2014, a year of my bike page has started to get its updates. Check back daily if you are interested as updates will be frequent.

we`ll be happy when the ice worms nest again

Good ice today. Lots of crackling outside. My family won't let me go for a walk and take better pictures than what I can take from the back window though - something about branches falling down...

ice mist

Southern Ontario is experiencing the first of three days of mixed rain and freezing rain laid down over a fair bit of snow. Naturally, this prompted me to head out in the car and take a few pictures. I am crazy that way.

Here is the best one:

never let me down

Yes, a title to a very good Depeche Mode song, but also yes, what the cat must have been saying to his sense of agility earlier today - he was out exploring the backyard, yet never touched the ground once.

bored, snow, and a camera

Took myself out for coffee with the camera - shot through glass at the front of the coffee shop

Need a pick me up? Shot through glass at the front of the coffee shop

Hazed up window - shot through glass at the front of the coffee shop

uptown snow town

tea?

open

and just for fun, a local road just outside of town

frosty cat

Continental Top Contact Winter II

 Tire Test: Continental Top Contact Winter II

Time for another tire review. As before, I am not a professional reviewer, I just ride bikes and use stuff. I pay for what I use myself with my own money, blah blah etc etc etc.

The tire this time around is a lovely little winter tire called the Continental Top Contact Winter II. Readers of this mighty blog of mine know that I am a big fan of the right tire for the job, but in case you are new here, here is a bit of history for you.

When I started riding a bicycle as a car, and decided to ride all year round, I got through my first winter with a set of burned out mud type cyclo-cross tires on my bike. I was using a Kona Dew with 700c wheels. The tires were great actually, and did a good job. I forget what they were though - something from Nokian I think (heck, I doubt I even have the name right even in my guess!).

The following winter, I used a set of Schwalbe CX Pro tires in the winter. They sucked. Complete crap. While very good in mud and on gravel (what they were made for to be fair), on snow and ice, they sucked. No other word for it. Two bad falls in six hours put me off of them in the winter for life.

I swapped them out for Schwalbe Marathon Winter tires, with studs. Loved those, even if they did have a tendency to toss studs out at the drop of a hat.

A bicycle swap saw me go from 700c to 26in tires. Enter a need for new winter tires. This time around, I did not mess about and went with Schwalbe Ice Spiker HS 333 tires. They were fantastic. Huge amount of grip in the snow. Very good on ice. But, they had some serious drawbacks. The rubber wore a lot since I ride on asphalt a lot. Also, the things are very heavy, and buzz like mad. But if you ride over hard packed snow all winter, they are well worth it.

This put me in search of a good winter tire which did not have studs, but would still give vastly improved grip in the snow.

Enter the Continental Top Contact Winter II.

Here is the company link for the tire for those who care about such things: http://www.conti-online.com/www/bicycle_de_en/themes/city/winter/topContactWinter_en.html

I went with the 26x1.9 tire size.

The first thing I noted was that the tire rolled much better than a studded tire. Gee, ya think? It was almost as fast as a slick, but not quite. Due to the soft rubber compound - supple until -25C - the tire has a lot of drag compared to summer spec tires with similar tread patterns. Pump it up to its maximum tire pressure, and it rolls along quite nicely. Other than feeling a bit squishy, it is hard to tell the tire is not "ordinary".

Like all winter tires, best grip is had in snow when the tire pressure is lowered and the tire is allowed to squash out a bit. Remember - get narrow tires for winter as they sink into the snow and bite the surface underneath. This is good unless you are "fat biking".

The winter specific rubber compound tires, like this one, are great in cold weather as they offer better grip on bare asphalt than a summer tire will, even if the tread patterns are identical. That right there makes these tires worth buying. The rubber does not freeze into hard blocks with little flex and reduced traction.

The tire pattern is quite bizarre for one used to aggressive tread in slippery conditions like I am. It is very shallow, and is basically a pattern of sipes designed to "grip" to ice and snow. Think Bridgestone Blizzak for example, or Spiderman's fingerprints. Whatever the case, it works.

The tire actually will retain some semblance of control even when black ice is hit. Don't think it is a studded tire though - the ice spikers currently sitting in the basement out perform the Continentals on the bike right now on ice by such a large margin that they are not even close to being in the same league. You MUST take more care on ice if you are coming from studs to this tire. Otherwise, they, and the ground, will bite you on the ass.

That said, the difference from a summer tire is remarkable. I was able to do limited steering and braking on black ice and did not feel as if the bike was about to slide out from under me.  Sudden moves are a bad idea though. And the bike will "float" a bit without a doubt, but if you keep your eyes up, relax, and let the bike float, it is not much worse than floating a mountain bike over liquid clay. Doable, but take care.

What about snow?

It is actually not too bad. The above picture shows what the tire looks like when rolling through a bit of snow. It packs up a bunch, but grips really really well. The tread pattern just plain works. I could brake hard, steer (some slip, but not bad) and accelerate just fine in the snow today. Today, we had a layer of black ice with about one to two cm of snow on top. Not much, to be sure, but potentially very slippery due to the ice underneath it. The tires were just fine. I was quite impressed when I pulled away from a stop on a steepish hill with snow and ice on it and the bike just went about climbing it. There was no slip at all from the back end and steering on this surface was fine. I was running tire pressures a bit below optimal for dry roads, which definitely helped.

Once I got more comfortable with the grip levels, I deliberately tried to upset them. Jerking the handlebar side to side at low speeds in the snow did not result in much if any real slip. Works for me. I know that they will skid, but the skid appears likely to be very controllable. Should be good.

One thing to note is how much water they hold in the sipes. You will leave a long track behind you after running through a puddle. It is this heavy duty siping coupled with the soft rubber that gives it its grip. While they hold a lot of water, they don't kick up as much snow as the knobby tires do. The mud flaps on the fenders did accumulate some build up, but not a lot. Very little to nothing got on my feet either. This is due in part to my fenders - I use Planet Bike Cascadia ATB fenders from MEC which really help keep the slop off of me. But the tendency of the tires to not throw a lot of snow helped as well.

I reserve judgement on their flat resistance since I only have about 100km on my set right now. They claim some protection from flats, but I don't expect protection on the level of a Schwalbe Marathon commuter tire. We shall see :)

This serves as a preliminary run down of the tire. So far, other than being a bit sketchy on ice, they are wonderful. A good friend of mine, who runs two bikes in the winter - one with studs, and one with these tires - reported that he only needed his studded tire bike five times last winter. His bike with these tires did it for him for the rest of the season.

Good deal if you ask me.

Update 1:

More snow riding has been done so I figured that an update was in order.

My earlier initial observations about the tires being good in the snow turned out to be correct. In general, I just ignore the tires and let them do their thing. Tires that just vanish and do their part are a pure win. They slip a bit, but do not dramatically skid out or cause concern. They remind me of the old Continental Cross Country tires that I had on my mountain bike over a decade ago. Those tires would grip like mad while slipping at the same time. It was a strange feeling - basically, they would skid out but in a very controlled manner which made "floating" the bike easy. They could be pushed very hard since the point of adhesion loss was so progressive. These snow tires do a similar thing.

Deepen the snow a bit though and they start to fall apart. They do not like deep snow very much and the bicycle will get a bit squirmy. It does not make the bicycle significantly unstable, but it is important to note. Rough unplowed paths are also a bit of a problem with these tires since they lack the tread to really bite into such surfaces. The machine will bounce around a bit. It won't dump a rider that is used to off road riding, but the tires are not as good as my studded Schwalbes are in similar circumstances.

When riding through slush and water on the road, the bicycle handled flawlessly. An incredible amount of water gets tossed up by the tires in such circumstances. It is very important that proper full fenders be used or the rider WILL get soaked.

Try to avoid hitting rock hard "pancakes" of ice on the road. The kinds of ice that are mixed in with slush and almost invisible. The bike will bounce off of them and get a bit skittish. Studded tires are better for that. So, avoid deep slush after an ice storm unless you are sure that the slush is all slush. Of course, these conditions are fairly rare.

My over all conclusion from initial observations remains the same. The tires are a good deal and work very well in urban environments. Don't trail ride them.

a recipe for delight

Take light, filtered by fast moving clouds and snow.

Take new fallen snow, kicked into the air by winds strong enough to lighten the rear of my Golf and make it "float" for a spell.

Take a camera.

What do you get?

A recipe for delight.

oh really weather, you think so?

It is October. This should not be happening. I mean, really...

Snow? Enough to stick to the front of the car and create actual visibility problems? In October for crying out loud?

This was the side of the car after hanging out at my parent's house for a bit eating home made muffins and drinking coffee. This shouldn't be happening in October where I live.

Mind you, the presence of snow and fall colour at the same time can make for some really gorgeous partial colour photographs which don't require photoshop. This is something to be thankful for. One thing I do look forward to is the diffuse, even light which envelopes everything once the snow starts.

Also, horses be frisky in this kind of weather. This guy was just motoring. Not when I took the picture, but just after. Honest.

This morning, though, the sun was out, the sky was blue, and any snow present came while we were all asleep and was therefore less offensive. It was also melting like crazy which was encouraging.

Coffee though was warm and good.

And seeing as this is Canada, the beer store is open seven days a week...