[owlie]

Welcome to the group.

[owlie]

That ain’t nothin’ compared to what we get when it warms up a little. I have a one hour commute home in the evenings. Before leaving town, I typically clean off my headlights. When I get home, I’m lucky if I can use my brights to see the road… It isn’t unheard of for me to stop in the middle of the drive to clean the head lights.

I don’t even want to think what my helmet would look like if I was driving in that nastiness..

[owlie]

Looks alot like my neighborhood. You sure you aren’t in Alaska…

Wait until you are sure that the roads are really clear. Ice is bad enough when you have four tires on the road; I don’t recommend trying it with two.

Stay warm!

[owlie]

Ah, but you should hear us whine when it hits 80F and 75% humidity.

In Oklahoma, an inch of snow is cause for a snow day.

Really the average climate where you live really dictates what you can tolerate as an extreme. Nobody around here has air conditioners, but I wouldn’t expect the Okies to have studded tires, chains, or a plow guy on retainer.

[owlie]

I believe that was also David Hough’s suggestion for winter riding.

[owlie]

I’ve never been on one, though my husband is thinking about getting one to go riding with his friend. They look like fun, but I think that my next toy will be a 4-wheeler.

In the winter, I like to hole up next to a fire with a cup of cocoa and a good book.

[owlie]

So, a couple of hours after I took the pictures above on Monday, it started snowing. And it kept snowing, and snowing, and snowing… and its still snowing…

Yesterday, I did my normal routine, except that the one hour commute that I normally have turned into three hours because an accident (due to the snow) blocked two of three lanes of the only highway out of town.

Today, I didn’t even bother trying to make it up my driveway. When I got home last night, the snow was about two inches above the bottom of my bumper. No way my little car would have made it up the driveway.

Around 2pm this afternoon, I went out and took some pictures around the house. At that point we had roughly 12″ of snow on the ground. I don’t know what it is now, but I am relieved to say that our plow guy has arrived to save the day. Theoretically I’ll have to go to work tomorrow.

For your viewing pleasure:

[owlie]

The frost and ice are the best part about winter up here (well, except for driving in it). Some days it is absolutely gorgeous.

Thankfully, we don’t usually get ice the way Oklahoma does. Sometimes it happens, but usually it is just frost or snow.

Enjoy the sunshine for me! Between the ice fog and the snow, I haven’t seen the sun since that sunrise shown above about a week and a half ago…

[owlie]

That was pretty interesting. I liked the comments and advice at the end.

[owlie]

Turning into my neighborhood is basically a blind right turn. I worked hard to get to where I could make it each time without going wide because I never know until I’m committed to a turning line whether there is oncoming traffic.

The funny thing was that once I was proficient at making the turn, I applied the same techniques to driving my cage and I don’t have nearly as many problems with it anymore in car or on bike.

[owlie]

You might also look into the “Ride Like a Pro” video. Once we got out on the course, having seen similar exercises on the video made some of the riding easier.

[owlie]

Darn, we are both showing our ages. Maybe I should pull that one off the rack this evening and marvel at how young Steve Guttenberg looks…

[owlie]

+1 for taking the MSF class first.

Like you, I had to wait several months between when I started thinking about riding and when I took the class. Honestly, the time will go by more quickly than you think, and you won’t be tempted to stupidly ride the bike that is just hanging out in the garage in the mean time.

Use the time in between to read up on riding skills and the different bikes. Get the “Ride Like a Pro” video and watch it over and over again while sitting out your couch making “vroom vroom” sounds. (well, okay, you don’t have to do the “vroom vroom” sounds if you don’t want to…) I found when I got to the MSF class, having watched the video several times, I was able to pick up some of the techniques a lot more quickly.

Best of luck!

[owlie]

My bike is toasty warm in the garage- though my plow-guy was duly impressed by it when he came to clear the 8″ of snow off the driveway last weekend.

[owlie]

Agreed. The closest parking lots are a 10 minute ride from my home, so I basically started on the streets of my neighborhood. The biggest problem I had once I got out of the loop of my neighborhood was turning (mostly from stops). Looking through the turns and trusting myself to already know where the surface traps were (loose gravel for me) was very difficult.

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