I was excited to take my new fat tire bike out for its inaugural spin. We haven’t had hardly any snow lately so the tread of the mountain bike trails are pretty much straight ice. I don’t have studded tires but I thought I would ride out and see how bad the trails were. So I rode down the Luce Line and rode fine over some rougher patches of ice. Right before the ski trails cross the Luce Line (right by the mountain bike entrance) I hit a patch of smoother ice and I felt my rear tire sliding. It all happened in slow motion, but I put my foot down and it slid too and as my right side slammed into the ice I saw my bike keep sliding a few more feet. It was a lot of pain, but no real damage to me or the bike – my right hip and knee took the worst of it and I got a good sized goose egg on my left shin.

After shaking myself off I got back on the bike and proceeded on the snowy edge of the trail to take a look at the mountain bike trails. Yup, the tread was icy on everything I could see. Had I not totally just biffed it, I might have been dumb enough to try it! So I turned around and stayed on the paved trail. I rode down to the Cedar Lake trail and then to the river and back home on Plymouth getting about 9 miles in. The paved trail was pretty much ice free except for a few shady spots and I could have ridden a different bike. I think it was still good to get the new bike out and see what adjustments I would need to make to it.

9.4 miles in 56:33

Later in the afternoon we had the kid’s ski lessons. We decided to move them both into Level 2 and we spent most of the time actually skiing and getting some of the hills in. It is funny to see how their different personalities respond to the different challenges of going up or down. And how one wants to really focus on just skiing and felt that the games were a waste of time! I ended up with about 2.4K of skiing during the class.

After class was over I went out for a quick loop with my classic skis. I did the Hidden Lakes trail sections and then up towards the upper stadium. I was still dressed for ski lessons which meant I was way over dressed for skiing at a more aggressive pace. So I was sweating way more than I needed to be. I decided to use the ski as a way to get the car instead of walking back from the Trailhead to the Chalet parking lot so I went down the Drevil’s Drop which I’ve never successfully made all the way down. I made it onto the flat section before falling, I think my ski edge caught one of the tracks. Guess what, I fell really hard on my right side again! Yea, the same spots hurt a lot! This quick ski was about 3.3K in 23:20 on my classic skis.

So that was a lot of work for one day!