The winter of 2014-2015 has been extremely mild for Northwest Indiana. Through the months of November and December there was no recordable snowfall, which is extremely unusual. The previous winter saw more than 70 inches of snow and the ground wasn’t visible between November 1st and March 1st. Today was the first big snow, and this is what we woke up to at 7:00 am. 12 inches!
We had originally planned to ride to Lake Michigan with some friends and ride along the beach, then ride to Michigan City. As we began shoveling the driveway at 9:00 am we shortly came to the realization that we would not be taking the fat bikes in the car up to the beach, because there was no way our cars could get out of our subdivision on unplowed roads. So we set off on our fat bikes, travelling about 6 mph, and trying to stay in the tracks left by cars.
The wind was blowing pretty strong from the Northeast, and visibility sucked, for lack of a better word. Marc quickly ditched his goggles but I was persistent with leaving mine on to avoid a frozen brow bone. I found wiping them from time to time with my mitten cover worked, because even though they were smeared with melted snow, it was just above freezing and I didn’t have to worry about them frosting over. On our way to town I noticed a man sitting at the side of the road in a plow trying to get his phone out of his pocket so he could take a picture of us.
We headed into town and quickly realized the roads in town were even worse that the county roads. Unplowed roads can be easier to ride through than roads with lots of slush and ruts left by cars. Marc crashed when he took a corner on a downhill that had deep snow ruts. We stopped at Franklin House to re-group, and it was then that we decided to eat lunch and head back home. On the way to eat lunch, we passed some kids having a snowball fight. I was pretty sure they were going to use us as target practice, but instead they just stared as we rode by.
We rode through town and rode onto a jogging trail that had been shoveled probably a few hours earlier, and there was about 4-5 inches of newly fallen snow. I find it much easier to ride through freshly fallen snow, than to try and follow someone else’s tracks. If you ride in the rut left by a previous bike you can be thrown off the bike if you veer out of the rut. So I rode next to Marc’s tracks rather than in them. As we drove through the KMart parking lot, I noticed an older looking man stuck in the snow in his car. He managed to rock the car back and forth and get unstuck, but it occurred to me that the fat bike was handling better than cars in the snow!
After we ate lunch, a pickup truck with two guys in it pulled alongside me in town and rolled down their window. The passenger said “Are those snow tires?!” I told him yes, and he smiled and said “You’ve got more traction than our truck!”
The ride home was much speedier than the ride into town, because after we got through the slushy, rutted, messy roads downtown we noticed the plows had been out on the county roads. It snowed the entire ride and we were both covered in snow, but I didn’t care. It was perfect weather to play in the snow because the temperature was just above freezing the entire ride. I found myself thinking about going home and making a snow angel.
