The perils of winter night riding...!

miss notax

Well, my usual Wednesday night ride in the forest turned into an especially chilly one :?

The forest is quite flooded at the moment (ha!) and we had a little stream to cross about 20 mins into the ride - not usually a problem obviously. It looked ok and one of my friends had already ridden across so off I enthusiastically ploughed into it..... and it turned out to be a bit deeper and muddier than I expected there :shock:

My front wheel sunk well below the hubs as the rest of the bike and me carried on, and I (apparently) held a quite impressive endo for about 2/3 seconds whilst my buddies were contemplating whether I was going to fall in on to my head / face first / sideways etc. Felt like a YEAR to me as I desperately tried to save it - and obviously failed - and fell cat-like into the stream onto my hands and feet

Anyway dragged the bike out the stream / mud, had a good laugh (I was very pleased to come out of it with only wet hands, wrists and feet!) but as I rode off my bike slowly froze. After about 10 mins I was stuck in the easiest middle ring gear for the remainder of the ride - all efforts to get it to change by messing around with the mech failed as we realised that after it's expected dunking all the gears had frozen at the handlebar end :shock:

So 15 miles on a bloody spin bike..... I wasn't cold but my hands and feet (both wet) were literally FREEZING and I couldn't generate any warmth as I was stuck in a daft gear The saviour of the night was the lovely glass of mulled cider at the pub we detoured into so I could warm up

Not sure what the moral of this story is; apart from taking a bit more care when riding into streams

concorde

Haha brill, all adds to the adventure! It was freezing out last night, the ruts are mush less forgiving when they're solid! But still enjoyed! I will miss winter riding when the summer comes!

miss notax

Yeah - I quite like the change when it freezes and the mud becomes crunchy and you can ride on it. I would rather no mud at all, but i'm happy to compromise!

.blitz

Happened to me during the winter of 2010-2011 when a small group in front of me skirted a pool of ice that had formed across a fireroad.

Of course I tried to ride through it, the ice cracked and down I went. Was amazed how quickly things iced up again my gloves felt like they were stuck to the grips and the drivetrain resembled a small glacier it wasn't shifting or going anywhere.

Fortunately was able to p!ss on the drivetrain in the time-honoured way and got it going again

anj132

I have heard of people pissing on derailleurs to defrost them... it might have worked on the gear triggers. Not sure what the worse situation is though, lack of gears or pissy hands.

miss notax

Had it just been the drivetrain I might have asked one of the lads to oblige.... but there's no way anyone (myself included) is weeing all over my shifters :shock:

Pissy hands are an absolute no-no!!!!

cooldad

You don't need a man - everything you might need here

miss notax

Sadly I think that would have just added to comedy of the evening

(I work for a magazine and we actually got send some of these as a sample once - worryingly the lads took them as presents for their wives / girlfriends... :shock: )

Thewaylander

Haha, as long as you had fun after

though a curry and a match might have fixed it all hehe

cooldad

miss notax wrote:

Sadly I think that would have just added to comedy of the evening

(I work for a magazine and we actually got send some of these as a sample once - worryingly the lads took them as presents for their wives / girlfriends... :shock: )

This one?

miss notax

Whatever that image is, I can't see it, which I think is probably a blessing

cooldad

Fixed specially for you.

cooldad

Couldn't find Dwarf Tossing Monthly.