fat biking ⁽¹⁵⁾

On the weekend of January 13th and 14th, snow covered the trails almost to my house. I did a 3-hour ride across the Bözingenberg on Saturday, the 13th, and a 4-hour loop across Plagne and the Stierenberg on Sunday, the 14th. Warm weather and rain during the week pushed the snowline up several hundred meters. Luckily, the mercury dropped below zero on Friday and remained there for the weekend.

Whenever you switch a part on your bike, it’s important to do your homework. A coworker of mine once wanted to change the stem on his bike. He got one, went on the put it on the bike, only to realize that his handlebar wouldn’t fit. He had purchased a stem with a 31.8mm clamp. Unfortunately, his bike was equipped with a 35mm handlebar. It’d be easy to laugh and say what a noob. But we can’t all be experts in everything. I’m certainly not. After several winters of riding my fat bike, the axle of my crankset has worn where the bearings are seated. Without tightening the pre-load adjuster, there was noticeable play. A tightened pre-load adjuster doesn’t remove that play; it only hides it while the bike is in the work stand. The play is still there under every pedal stroke and will only worsen over time. It will also lead to premature bottom bracket failure. It was therefore time to replace the axle. Because I chose a SRAM XX1 carbon crankset at the time, a simple axle change isn’t possible. The axle and the non-drive side crank arm form an inseparable unit.

When I first started fat-biking in March of 2013, I grabbed one of my Giro Aeon road/MTB helmets and slipped on a winter cycling cap when my head felt too cold. On cold days, I took off for rides wearing a Bern Brentwood helmet that I had bought for my daily commute. Soon, it became the helmet I wore for fat-biking exclusively. For very cold or snowy days, I bought a Smith Vantage, a goggle-friendly ski helmet with ear pads and adjustable vents. The Brentwood is now ten years old. Safe for the visor, which forms one piece with the liner, it held up amazingly well. But after ten years, even a sturdy helmet such as the Brentwood should be replaced.

There’s not much snow left on our Jura mountains. Despite the mild temperatures, what was left, fortunately, melted only slowly during the week. Likely thanks to the dry air. It’s the end of January, and it has never felt wintery so far. If we don’t get any winter storms in the coming weeks, like other parts of the world are experiencing right now, winter may very well be over at the end of February or even before. I’m trying to make the best out of it by riding the still snow-covered hillsides in my backyard. It means that I have to ride my studded tires on pavement and gravel for a couple of miles to and from snow-covered trails. I do this carefully. Studded fat-bike tires aren’t cheap after all. At the moment, they’re very needed since a lot of the trails have ice on them.

My weekend routine these days follows pretty much the same pattern every weekend. I hit the sack between 10 and 11 PM to be woken up by my wife between 3 and 4 AM. She goes to bed, and I go upstairs, clean our cats’ litter box, feed them, and get some more sleep on the couch with the alarm clock set to wake me up at regular intervals to feed our kitties. Most of the time, I get up after 8 AM to make breakfast for myself and our cats. Since my wife is getting a few hours of rest in our downstairs bedroom, I spend the morning with quiet activities. Lately, this has been setting up my MacBook. There’s not a lot of software I need; Edge to browse, Spark to read mail, Photos for my large photo library, Atom, and Publii to maintain this blog, Office 365 and OneDrive, music players such as Sonos, Spotify, and IINA to listen to music. I have to say, macOS Monterey is a wonderful OS.