No, Really

I thought it was cold a couple weeks ago, but I was wrong. Today it was 14 degrees outside at 7 a.m. and we had our first snowfall on Sunday morning. This means that it's time to change over to the "winter" tires. By "winter" tires I actually mean a mismatched pair of mountain knobbies that I can run at low pressure when there is actually snow on the ground. The rear is a 6 year old WTB Velociraptor 2.3 that is worn so badly that it looks more like a "commuter" tire, i.e. slick down the center and knobby on the sides. The front is a, um, well actually I don't know what it is except for that it is the stock tire that came with the bike back in 1991. It looks like a copy-cat version of an old Specialized Ground Control front with the alternating square block tread pattern. The funny thing is that the 18 year old tire appears to have held up better than the newer WTB tire. Of course it's not really fair to make a direct comparison since I rode the newer tire much more aggressively than the old one. Nonetheless, the rubber has decayed less and the sidewalls look more intact.

The funny thing in all this, however, is that I didn't actually ride in to work today. I have an errand to run in the middle of the day, unfortunately. I'll be back at it tomorrow, when it's forecast to be 16 degrees in the morning...