A Bit Of Fluff

Warning; May contain images that readers may find offensive. Parental supervision advised

What with the weather turning on the fun side even for a few hours I decided to make a change to my morning ride and break out the cross country, wide width tire, stealth wheeled ,retro fit bar road bike and go full out in the fluffy stuff that had dumped during the night.

Living outside of Yokohama and half way up a nice climb the snow was pretty thick and on leaving the house at 6:30am there was still enough snow to prevent me from going out on the road bike. The going from the onset was pretty slippery and I had to drop the pressure on the front and rear tire to get proper traction and control.

With my confidence increased I put the pedal down and set a pretty good pace of 27kph through the hiking paths where I live and with the bike being what it is I was able to ignore all stairs and blast down them with the snow, tires and shocks absorbing the impacts.

Reaching Route 16 I took the river road, again offering lots of run on the shaded side where no one had walked and the morning sun hadn’t already started the thaw, again, the tires and squat rear triangle giving lots of traction and acceleration over the snow. Before long I was almost at the junction where Route 16 meets Route 1 and passing some picturesque temples I had to make a quick stop to get a photo.

Not wanting to ride on Route 1 I decided to take the back roads along the river and the cut over to Minato Mirai and along the bay. By now the sun and the salt air had done its work and only a few places had a smattering of snow left.

I almost had a tumble however on the old wooden bridge as you leave Akarenga and head to Yamishita Koen as the snow and slush had made the wooden planks very slippery and the rear end fish tailed out, keeping the feet in the clips I was able to steer into the slide and pull the back end in line again without crashing.

Finally reaching Kannai it was if it hadn’t even snowed at all but 80% of the ride had been a lot of fun and although it added another 10 minutes to my normal ride it was a lot of fun and broke up my usual morning training regime with some childish fun that put a big grin on my face. Going back will be slightly borring so I'm tempted to scout out for the ridge road that Momonger mentioned.