Getting dirty... Snow, Mud and Mtns... Yeah baby..That's the Ticket

"If you think you don't need a helmet, you probably don't." ~ Unknown

Got an opprotunity to take the bike out this week. Once after work for a late evening ride, and today, where we went to the mountains to get some back country training.

This series of reflection pictures were taken about 7:00 p.m. on one of the tributaries of the Snohomish river. Notice the daylight... It's staying light out longer now... Whoo hooooo!  

I dunno, but I think the refection looks better than the actual trees. The refracted light gets filtered, resulting in a more crisp image that brings out the colors.

My bike was parked up from the river by a farm. Some horses were coming by to check it out and got spooked when I came up from the bank. Good thing too that they ran away. Last thing I need to find on my seat is some bite marks from a horse.. else they may find their way to a glue factory or a doggie food processing plant :-)   

Today, I took the bike out towards the undeveloped roads around Mt Rainier Park. This is the road up to Mowich lake. There was a new dusting of snow at the lower elevations. Very pretty. 

I knew the park entrance would be closed... it usually is until late May, however, I was hoping to get to the gate.

As you can see, I only made it about 1/2 way when I encountered some snow. It started out innocent enough, but kept getting thicker as I went up in elevation.

I stopped to setup my tripod to take a picture of myself and it began snowing pretty good.  If you look closely you can see the snowflakes (select pic for larger image).

I road a bit further than this picture shows. It got deep and I got caught in a very deep rut... a trench really. I had one heck of a time turning this big ox of a bike around. I got off it and gave her some throttle while I tried to pushing it forward.... No luck, the big girl kept sinking in the snow. I eventually let it roll backwards and then used the momentum to turn it across the tracks. Even then, it got stuck pretty good. I had to talk nice to the girl and coax her back and forth to widen the track and turn her around.

Thankfully, I didn't drop the bike. We took a breather as we came back down.

It was gorgeous, but, as you can see in the picture, the snow was coming back towards me and I didn't want to get caught in it again.

As it was, I had to ride through some slushy stuff on the road and when I hit the asphalt coming back out of the park it got very, very slippery. Have you ever tried ice skating with one of these big girls... its not fun... especially when she has the weight advantage on you.

All-in-all, it was a great experience. I will get some more time in the dirt with the bike as spring begins to take hold and the roads dry out a bit. A good set of off-road tires wouldn't hurt either.

I got home at 6:00 p.m. Not a bad way to spend you day off.  I now have 9,000 miles on the bike in less than a year of ownership. Time for a new oil change.

Until Next Time....