I rode into school around 9:00 before there was a ton of DS accumulated. It was quite cold and windy, and the DS was really fine and dry. My trip was Ok, just cold. I picked up my computer and a course pack at our carrol in the library and headed back out to ride up the mountain to Smith House. This is an old homestead that now houses a cafe, a little museum space, and offices for park administrators. Sometimes groups of kids go upstairs to see movies about wildlife and stuff like that.
So I didn't make it up McTavish, mentioned before, super steep meanie of a hill. Too much snow, too much knee pain...I tried and made it half way at about 4 km/hr. Once I reached the park I hiked up a steep bank to the dirt/snow road and got rolling again. Slow, but ok. I then arrived at Smith House, spent a few hours in peace, and headed out. It was at this point that I encountered the Death Snow.
I sketched around a bit, sliding my back wheel a bit in some turns on the way down. Super slippery snow, shifty. I rolled fast nontheless and took my chances. Then I hit the switchbacks. The first biggie was ok; one foot dab. The second was not so ok. I got into a two wheel slide as I turned left, and then high-sided. By this point I had lost most of my momentum, so I didn't hit hard. But I did kinda land on my computer. Ooops (its fine). I continued on, and with much hand braking, made it back onto campus without ant mishaps.
The trip home from campus about four hours later was horrendous. At this point I guess about 15cm had fallen, and some plowing had been done. The snow was so shifty it was incredibly difficult to keep straight. Like almost impossible at times, worse than any mud riding or snow riding I have done, ever. I chalk this up to my 32c knobbies and cruiser handlebar; not the most stable set-up imaginable. I was passed too close by cars a few times and was pretty concerned for my safety. So I was relieved to make it to Parc Lafontaine intact, and was able to relax from there on, taking some sidewalk sections to play it safe. Altogether brutal...Death Snow.
In response to my encounter with the Death Snow, and in light of the fact that we have another good month and a half of winter, I switched over to an MTB riser bar and 38c knobbies (thanks Rodd) this morning. On the way to the cafe where I now sit, I had no trouble at all, which I chalk up to the set-up and additional snow plowing. I'll keep it like that until I put the drops back on I guess.
If anyone has any suggestions for a substitute name for Death Snow, lets hear/read it.
Finally, we are coming to Ottawa friday through tuesday. Hope to hang out some for sure.
5 comments:
Great title for the post. I laughed out loud. Then I thought to myself, I'll be clever and look up the most appropriate Inuit word for 'death snow'. But, alas, came to find out that (sort of like German) I'd have to construct the word myself. It seems the word doesn't exist but can be constructed using the rules of the Inuit language. Not being fluent in Inuktitut I don't feel up to the challenge. However, here is some interesting info I found on the Inuit language hoax.
http://www.mendosa.com/snow.html
QUOTE "Inuit Words for Snow:
The Great Inuit Vocabulary Hoax is anthropology's contribution to urban legends. It apparently started in 1911 when anthropologist Franz Boaz casually mentioned that the Inuit—he called them "Eskimos," using the derogatory term of a tribe to the south of them for eaters of raw meat—had four different words for snow. With each succeeding reference in textbooks and the popular press the number grew to sometimes as many as 400 words.
In fact, "Contrary to popular belief, the Eskimos do not have more words for snow than do speakers of English," according to linguist Steven Pinker in his book The Language Instinct. "Counting generously, experts can come up with about a dozen."
At another site (http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000405.html)
I found this:
QUOTE: "The story about Inuit (or Inuktitut, or Yup'ik, or more generally, Eskimo) words for snow is completely wrong. People say that speakers of these languages have 23, or 42, or 50, or 100 words for snow --- the numbers often seem to have been picked at random. The spread of the myth was tracked in a paper by Laura Martin (American Anthropologist 88 (1986), 418-423), and publicized more widely by a later humorous embroidering of the theme by G. K. Pullum (reprinted as chapter 19 of his 1991 book of essays The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax). But the Eskimoan language group uses an extraordinary system of multiple, recursively addable derivational suffixes for word formation called postbases. The list of snow-referring roots to stick them on isn't that long: qani- for a snowflake, api- for snow considered as stuff lying on the ground and covering things up, a root meaning "slush", a root meaning "blizzard", a root meaning "drift", and a few others -- very roughly the same number of roots as in English. Nonetheless, the number of distinct words you can derive from them is not 50, or 150, or 1500, or a million, but simply unbounded. Only stamina sets a limit."
And finally, at the controversial Wikipedia, I found this:
QUOTE "Eskimo words for snow:
It is a popular urban legend that the Inuit or Eskimo have an unusually high number of words for snow: dozens, hundreds, or thousands. The number of words depends on the definitions of Eskimo (there are a number of languages) and snow, and on the method of counting numbers of words in languages that have quite different grammatical structures from English"
It's still funny right? I hope so. I wondered about the veracity of this 'fact' when I used it, and now my suspicion is validated. Nice work. Seems like an Inuit would do the same as me and simply modify 'snow' with 'death'. Excellent. I'll stick with Death Snow then unless/until someone proposes a better term.
it is definitely still quite funny!
yes, sir.
Yes, DS indeed. My ride home from work was similar. It was very slippery. I mostly rode home sideways, often fishtailing from left to right. I'm sure it helps improve the bicycle handling skills, but I'd rather practice that away from bitchy drivers.
I am riding my MTB beater with IRC mythos 1.9 front and 2.1 python rear. I think the best setup is using narrow cross tires on a fixed gear. You need knobs, but you also need to cut though the snow like a pizza cutter. I think my tires are too wide,so they float on top of the snow. My fixie does not have the clearance to handle snow so I think I am stuck with what I have. It works great once the snow has been packed down a bit. The tires bite in nicely at that point.
But last night...the DS...it mixes with the dirt on the road and makes this brown sugar stuff. BS indeed...
I know what you mean about cutting through the snow...in theory it works. But I had just the set-up you mentioned - 32c Cyclocross knobbies and fixed - and it was still deadly. They cut only so far, then pushed snow (like the snow shifted in chunks), or they got pulled all over the place when they passed over car tracks. Sideways. It wass much better the next day with 38 knobbies and a riser bar, but then the snow was evenly packed, so its hard to say. I can say that when I was riding my MTB commuter, similar to yours, I never experienced DS like that...
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