Day one

Soooo tuesday morning bright and frosty, well dark actually but clear skys and a pretty cool sickle moon. Got to the bottom of the street turned offroad and hit my first obstacle, a vertical wooden plank, not very comfortable on the bike yet I approached slowly and without commitment, lifted the front wheel over had second thoughts and braked and stopped as the rear wheel hit, keeled over against the fence. Ahem. Mind you it could have been worse (Doesn't get any less funny with repeated viewing) The muddy bit through darcy lever was tricky thick crust on the churned up mud slowed you right down then as you slowed you broke through the crust into the sticky mud and tricky to get going again. Yuk. Headed through moses gate, some ice around but managed to avoid most of it and gingerly cross what I couldn't avoid. Got to the wall of death hypothermia, about as wide as the bars so hardly a skinny but there's nearly a mile of it and the frosty bits were off putting, failure may not end up with broken bones but a dunking in the canal in these temps several miles from home would be bad.

There's a right bog before the climb to ringley road almost stalled and fell into that, ewwww. This bike is obviously not as capable on tricky thrutchy stuff as my ss mtb. Some frosty road, over the motorway (climb up to the bridge is never going to be doable with this gearing) and the easy route through HTN country, chatted to a rider commuting without lights (brave) then I said goodbye and really started to shift, this is what this bike is for, playing down the power on open nto too tech trails, woosh. All along the river watching the dawn, clear sky, manchester skyline and peak district behind aw nice.

Bit of cross town stuff, a few short flights of stairs, made it in to work ok, no problems and not even very dirty. Good stuff



Riding home it was even colder, decided to hit the singletrack, SS bikes have their own optimum speed depending on gearing and this one is several mph faster than my c456. So I'm heading down a trail i've not ridden in months, on an unfamiliar bike that is less capable than I'm used to, there's ice around, it's dark and I'm shifting a fair bit faster than usual. So far so awesome :-) Blasted along really enjoying it, lots of fun and quick. Guess I'm used to the new bike then, even managed to hop the missing stone on the WoH but grounded out my chainring on the big step climbing up to nob end (fnar) oops.

Weds was more of the same, set off and my legs felt drained pushig it hard on the singletrack had taken it's toil, was coasting in until I hit the singletrack and then, well this bike likes to go at a certain speed and my legs seemed happy to comply. Few sketchy moment, a tyre rolls over soft mud making a rut this then freezes and these tiny ruts which don't really bother fat tyres can be rather tricky for skinnys, nearly had a few offs when ruts coincided with corners but no actual crashes so far. So far so good, I like it, Thursday would be the big test tho.