It might have to be the bus tomorrow

[Holdsworth]

We haven't had much snow in Crewe during this cold weather, but the amount have had has made it quite dangerous to use my road bike on the un-gritted roads around here. I did attempt a ride to college yesterday using my build-it-yourself catalogue special mountain bike, never again, weighs an absolute ton, gears are completely naff (change up and down at random) and the pedal crank is threatening to fall of AGAIN!!!

I do not have another bike to ride on and do not know another person who I can borrow one off, this means my only ridable bike is my roadie. I have tried the road bike but the front wheel goes all over the place under light braking and the back slides out doing the same. Cornering is scary to say the least.

I think I will be forced to take the college bus tomorrow, I really try to avoid it as much as I can. It means getting up 1/2 hour earlier and it takes an amazing 1 hour 5 minutes on average to get to Reaseheath from my area of town, compared to just 20-25 minutes on the bike. That is assuming that it turns up at all (First Bus).

 

[fossyant]

Any bike will have you off on ice (unless got special tyres). Stick your MP3 player on and have a kip for an hour !

Worth giving the MTB a good service and lube - strip gear cables and clean, grease lightly and refit. Get a big spanner on the crank.

 

[Sam Kennedy]

Yeah I'm going to walk to school tomorrow.

I've been using my road bike to get there and back, the main roads were fine, and the side roads were a little bit iffy, but not unmanageable.

However today, the side roads were barely manageable, I had to stop quite a few times because my bike was sliding around so much, the cars on the same road were doing barely 10mph.

Once I got to the main road I thought everything was fine, then I stopped at a RAB and put my foot down and nearly fell over, I looked around and noticed black ice everywhere!

My 28mm tyres handled packed snow and snow/ice mixes fine, however, it has got to the point where the packed snow has lots of ruts, ridges and bumps, so is not suitable at all for my bike!

 

[fossyant]

My neighbour/friend is a die hard commuter - all weathers on his MTB - even he was walking to the bus this morning...... and as I cycled past I shouted 'mornin still cheating on these tyres' - he replied 'wish I had some'..........

 

[taxing]

All of our buses were cancelled at 6pm yesterday, some are starting to run again today but not reliably. There aren't many options left for the non-driver...