Grippy to Slippy

Trails still grippy but soon to be slippy
at The Beer Tree.

Today's post Christmas ride started with Bryan's one-line email yesterday afternoon. It was succinct and it covered all of the bases. It said "Merry Christmas where are we riding tomorrow?"

The ride was badly needed after the previous day of unbridled gluttony and materialism run amok. Fortunately four of us were able to gracefully (more or less) get exemptions from family plans to exchange gifts, spend gift cards, and generally wallow in the soulless black hole known as the King of Prussia Mall.

Temperatures were in the low 20s and the trails were rock solid. The usual spots were pretty torn up and so just a little treacherous when frozen (unless you were Bryan on a fat bike), generally the trails were in great shape. We took our breakfast break at The Beer Tree and marveled at the partially frozen lake (beautiful), Kirk caught us up on the epic SSCXWC from earlier this month, and we debated the merits of centimeters versus inches (inches won) and attempted to measure Kirk's custom frame but failed miserably.

About then, our pithy discourse was interrupted by a lone snowflake that drifted down (presumably from a mile or more over our heads) and landed smack dab on the top of a metal flask that we happened to have with us and was sitting upright on the ground at our feet. We took this to be a blessing straight from the biking Gods and we were right because no sooner had we saddled up the the ride home when it began to snow BIG TIME. Huge flakes, Visibility dropped from miles to a few hundred feet, and the trails went from brown and grippy to white and slippy in about 10 minutes. It was a magical example of being at the right place at the right time

And most of all it was a great example of not being at the mall.

Chris

"You can’t drink all day if you don’t start in the morning."
     -- Celia Rivenbark