I took Friday off work to
celebrate my birthday and to take my first snow ride of the year. We not snow Thursday night, part of a massive storm which covered the most of the Midwest. Unfortunately, the conditions turned out to be not quite ideal for a
ride. The big problem was that prior to the snow the temperatures had been up in
the fifties, so a rather sharp drop in the temperature Thursday evening was
quickly followed by about two inches of snow. As a result, the ground
did not have a chance to freeze before the insulating snow. Come this morning
I could tell the ground underneath the snow had not frozen meaning I’d be
running into quite a bit of mud. My trip to the Town Run Trail Park on the north
side or Fort Ben was out of the question.
Instead I opted for a ride around
the Butler University campus and the Central Canal Towpath (a crushed limestone green way that cuts through Indianapolis) on the Monocog.
Getting to campus was a trick since all the neighborhood roads were covered in
ice. Once on campus, I found some snow, but some of the trails I usually spin around
on were only partially covered in snow with lots of mud as a result of the lack
of a solid freeze last night.
In the end of I rode the perimeter
of the university soccer and softball fields which did have a solid layer of
snow. No mishaps save for almost endoing into a snow filled drainage ditch as I
was cutting across a field. Overall, not exactly the snow ride I wanted, but
there is supposed to be a hard freeze tonight. Considering that most of the trails
I saw today were almost snow free, or on their way to being snow free, I’m hoping the exposure combined with
tonight’s freeze will harden them up for an early morning ride up at Town Run.
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