The week is almost over and I can’t say bike commuting has been a blast the last couple of days. Like many other cyclists in Stockholm I was looking forward to seeing prioritized winter maintenance in action and riding clean bicycle routes but, once again, the City of Stockholm (or whoever is responsible for the maintenance) has failed to fulfill their promises. Miserably.
I consider myself a decent rider and still cycled my daughter to preschool every morning but not everybody feels comfortable riding on black ice with 480 studs. Alice’s 10 minute bicycle ride (2.5 kilometers) has become a 45 minute bus + subway ride for many other kids and that is NOT OK.
But life is too short to spend hoping that, someday, winter (or not) bike commuting will be taken seriously by the Capital of Scandinavia. I won’t let any sort of frustration affect my plans for the first warmish ride of 2015 on the bike with the skinny tires.
I know the Jake The Snake is not a true road bicycle according to the Book of Fred but trust me it works perfectly fine on asphalt too. In 2014, most of the road pedaling I did was on the Paddy Wagon (around 4,500 kilometers bike commuting) but I also managed around 1,000 kilometers on the Jake The Snake.
I just hope I can ride that green horse more in 2015 and I’m definitely looking forward to fixing a shorten stem and switching to a nice Cambium slate saddle from Brooks England (that’s the big plans I have so far). It won’t make me a faster and more committed road cyclist but it will make the bike look even better. For sure.
And while I day and night dream about that first ride I believe the ice is slowly melting away. Although it’s 6°C and government agencies have nothing to do with that.
Happy cycling new year. Ride safe.
