Post Snow and Bailout Gears

Looped around Denver yesterday.

Once again, made me realize how lucky I am to live in a community that provides the sort of bike access that Denver does. Even though we got a couple of feet of snow last week in a couple different storms, the bike path was pretty busy. Amazing how well used that recreation infrastructure is.

Since the wind was supposed to turn around to the north, I didn't want to take the ride down toward the Springs and have to fight a north wind coming home. But as it turned out, it didn't turn until very late, so I could have done that ride. I had wanted to shy away from the bike path, because I expected there to be snow and ice at the edge of a lot of the underpasses like last week. But it was a bonus that there were very few spots with snow and ice.

Lunch at Confluence Park was just incredible really. Sunny and warm, lots of people watching, it was all I could do to get back on the bike and ride the last 40 miles home.

I've now done 2 rides on the new 7900 stuff. I have to say that the gearing with the compact and the 11-28 seems about ideal for me. I won't know until I start climbing about the climbing gears, but I've got to believe that I'll be able to hold that 28 tooth bailout gear in my pocket for that little extra sense of security on the long and steep ones - probably rarely use it but enjoy it just for the sense of security that it gives me. Funny how that works - when you've got that bailout gear in the back of your mind, it seems to help you exert even more and keep the effort and pace up even higher - knowing that if you really blew up, you could drop down into that tiny little thing and recover.