and there arose an exultant sound

Winter!

We are getting a real one this year.

I have tried to make it through the winter on my bicycle as I have in the past. Due to the nature of my job, with its variable and far flung work locations, bicycle commuting is a challenge at best, and impossible at worst. Be that as it may, when the fates conspire to give me a location for the day close to home, I take my bike.

Which brings us to winter!

Winter!

We are getting a real one this year.

Thus far, we have had a lot of snow, a lot of ice, and a lot of thawing (with the extra special glare ice which comes with rain and a thaw on packed snow). And so naturally it was this year, as opposed to two years ago when winter gave Southern Ontario a miss, I tried to use as my primary winter tire on the bicycle a non-studded tire set.

This was not a mistake as they perform well, but it does make for some unnecessarily interesting rides to work. Slippy kinds of rides. The combination of huge snowbanks, packed down MUPS, and narrower lanes and ice have made me come to the conclusion that perhaps those Schwalbe Ice Spikers I have sitting there on the basement floor would serve me better if they were on the rims of my bicycle.

Now I used these tires all last winter, and loved them, but since then I have swapped out my frankenfenders for a stock set of unmodified planet bike mountain bike fenders with honking big mud flaps. I was somewhat concerned that the rear Ice Spiker would not fit and would pick away at the fenders.

However, after fighting with the Continentals that were on the bike (why are they so hard to remove?!?), cleaning up the wheels and bike and slathering the frame and all but the brakes with rust proofing solution, and putting on the Ice Spikers, and reinstalling the wheels on the bike...

... there arose an exultant sound.

They fit. With huge clearance. And no need to screw around with the fender adjustments.

tire talk

There is an update on my Continental Top Contact Winter II tire review. New information is at the end of the review for those interested.

I finally made up my mind about which tires to get for the cyclocross bicycle. I settled on the Continental Super Sport Plus sized at 700x23c. They fit nicely on the 622x15c rims I have (Shimano RS10 wheel set). Obviously, since this is winter, I have no opinion on how they work and feel on the road since it is winter out there, but they seem like they should be ok.

Visually, they look almost hilarious on a cyclocross bike. 700x23c tires are obviously quite narrow and given the clearance that a 'cross bike has for mud etc the gaps between the frame/fork and tire are quite large compared to what they look like on a proper road bike or on a 'cross bike with larger tires mounted. It won't affect the performance since I am not racing (if I was racing at a high level, it would make a difference) but it does look a little silly. :)

They are quite thick on the rolling surface and remind me of the Schwalbe Marathons. This is a good thing since they mass about half of what a Marathon does. In theory anyway, the tires should be pretty puncture proof.

I got the folding version of the tire. They are very difficult to mount though. Much more so than normal folding tires. It took me over 20 minutes to get the front tire mounted and I blew out an inner tube in the process (pinched it). Once mounted though, they settled on quite nicely and did not have any side to side wobble which some tires have. I will have more to say about them obviously once I can get out and ride on them.