FLCC> turkey one-wing snow angel: a good omen?

Mon Feb 11 10:05:23 EST 2008

I'm not sure if the club issues awards for stuff like this, but I think Darwin does.

Jack

-----Original Message-----
From: flcc-bounces at icycle.org [mailto:flcc-bounces at icycle.org]On Behalf Of aspec335 at aol.com
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2008 8:57 AM
To: FLCC at icycle.org
Subject: Re: FLCC> turkey one-wing snow angel: a good omen?

I had just gotten to my house that sits close to 96B and happened to look out the window when I saw John and Dan ride by. It was 15 degrees out! Probably a minus 10 wind chill.

The club must have some type of award for that.

Alex

-----Original Message-----
From: John Dennis <jvd at baka.com>
To: flcc at icycle.org
Sent: Sun, 10 Feb 2008 10:36 pm
Subject: FLCC> turkey one-wing snow angel: a good omen?

Overlooking Senator Obama’s dynamite speech in Virginia (you can listen to and view it here <http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/10/clinton-campaign-manager-is-out/?hp> ; Hillary’s is there too, I’m listening to it as I write this), the good news is that the three tiger finch chicks at Longview have fledged and the adult birds are even letting them have their own perch in the aviary. 

I was thinking of calling these ride notes “rendez-vous at Longview”  but Dan Barbasch was not impressed.  He says the rides I describe bear little resemblance to the rides we go on.  Anyway, I drove to Longview today (up the hill a piece from IC) and met Dan about 12:30pm. It had been sunny and warm all morning.  I even packed a tube of sun block. Dan had mentioned “some clouds on the radar near Elmira” but I went ahead and packed my road bike even though Dan told me he would be on his commuter bike which has heavy-duty fenders and aggressive tread tires.  As we were saddling up, it began snowing…a sort of pretty flolicky snow that wasn’t sticking but then it wasn’t melting either.  Might we go as far as Candor? We headed up King Road to get on a nice back road that Dan knew and soon found ourselves on Ridgecrest in something that—with a touch of hyperbole—could have been described as white-out conditions.  After some significant climbing we hung a right on Nelson, deciding that 96B with it’s big wide shoulders would be the better bet. 

As I was cruising down Nelson at 20+mph, this wild turkey comes running across the road and it slips and falls when it is almost exactly in front of me.  Apparently, the left leg had lost traction.  The left wing spread out and carved a nice one-wing snow angel in the fresh snow on the shoulder before it regained control and carried on, two-legged, into the right verge.  I had been thinking of breakin’ loose one or both shoes from my pedals, but after seeing the turkey go into its slide, I concluded that road conditions were such that the lateral torque of breakin’ a foot loose would be enough trigger the bike and I doin’ our own snow-angel thing willy-nilly.  

Back at 96B, we noticed the first car to come along had its emergency blinkers on.  So we did the second dumb move of the day, we turned left and south.  We would go as far as Danby and then turn back.  But at Danby we kept going, snow noodles streaming out of my front break calipers whenever I rode in the snow on the shoulder.  After the long downhill to Willeysville, the sun broke out and the snow stopped and the road turned wet.  Everything was OK except for my seat getting progressively damper!  At Candor, we arrived with snow and ice caked to our faces. We refueled at the gas station, and we made yet another dumb move: we neglected to bring our bikes inside.  And we dallied too long over our hot drinks. Coming out, we found derailleurs and brake and gear cables all frozen solid. Temps had dropped or so it seemed.  A spray can of penetrating oil coupled with quite a bit of kicking loosened things up enough to have more than one gear.  No sooner were we headed north than that indomitable Willseyville-Candor head wind came out of the woodwork.  A few miles on we were passed by two engines from the Wilseyville Fire Dept, two rescue ambulances and several private vehicles with flashing blue lights.  North of Wilseyville, we eventually came upon  a three-vehicle pile-up, largely cleared, but with traffic still backed up in both directions.  While waiting for a van with crumpled front end and broken out rear window to get loaded up, we lost valuable body heat and our brake cables refroze.  Back in the saddle, the wind seemed stronger and colder. We were back in the hills on a section of 96B I had almost never ridden before today.  

Except for cold feet, I felt warm enough, but why was I having trouble speaking clearly?  I would put the headwind at 10+ mph with gusts up to 25mph.  I suspected wind chill of below zero. Back on higher ground, the snow was too thick on the shoulder so we rode in the right-hand track of the right lane, watching our mirrors carefully.  Back at Longview, we loaded our bikes into my car and noted the air temp shown on the dash was 16 degrees.  Yesterday’s ride out to the Finger Lakes National Forest and back on clear roads and in the low 30s had made a lot more sense!

Ride safe he muttered indistinctly,   John 

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