Winter Ride In Calgary

[Banack]

Hey boys,

It has been a while since I posted on here, but I thought you'd enjoy this.

On November 17, I was driving around in +7 weather in my truck and realized several of the main roads in Calgary were free of ice, snow, and moisture. After pondering for the evening, I decided to take the Versys out for a nice long rip on November 18. I work on the road from time to time and accumulated enough points through Wyndham to purchase a GoPro Hero 2 HD camera. After mounting it to my helmet I was off. It was incredible driving around with the snow in the ditches, yet on a dry road.

This is the fun part. I had planned on pushing the bike up and down our very icy alley to avoid spilling it. When I pulled out of the garage, I thought ahhhh... it's not too icy; so I drove down to alley with my feet out and ripped around Calgary for a few hours. Upon returning, I again put my feet down and began my trip down the icy alley. About 5 meters from my garage, I hit straight ice and dumped it.

Here is a video of it

You Tube

You Tube

Call me an idiot if you want, I likely deserve it for not pushing that bike down the alley. But I don't regret taking that bike out on the main roads for a second, there was nothing wrong with them; incredible time.

Not sure who here runs GoPros, but I slowed down a video from 120 fps by a factor of 10, pretty cool stuff.

Here's the link to that one:

You Tube

You Tube

I'll start posting videos of bike riding in the spring.

Cheers and happy riding,

Shawn

[Kawa007]

Yeah love that little GoPro. As for the fall that sucks, but when we stretch our Canadian riding season it can happen. Front brake on ice gives you 0 chance of recovery. And if you can have a look at the K73 Heidenau tires, they will also help increase safety as the rubber is softer and grippier (not saying they would have prevented this fall, but could prevent some slipping on cold pavement where the stock tires would slide)

And any damage from the fall?

[MTS]

Nice sheet of ice. Could skate on that!

Sorry about the dump! That always sucks!

[Banack]

Haha thanks for the kind responses, I was expecting to get beat up a bit for that one. I'm still not exactly sure how that happened; my buddy watched it today at work and said WHY DID YOU CRANK YOUR HANDLEBARS LIKE THAT!?!? I don't remember doing that - I remember my front tire slipping out - possibly I tried to correct that by turning - too short of a timespan for me to be able to recall what I was thinking.

Thanks for the info on the tires made for less than ideal conditions- any advantage is always welcome in my books.

As for the damage, I only broke the end off the front brake lever (minor fix) and shattered my right hand cover. I ordered the hand covers from Thailand for a very cheap price- they have LED's built into them that can be tied into the signal lights using T-taps. Initially, they were white, but I used some sort of orange tape inside the lights (if I remember correctly) to give them that nice amber glow.

Anyways, happy riding gents. I'll be down in Phoenix for 2 weeks in February and might try to rent a bike, if anyone is up for a meet-up and rip, I'm in.

Take care,

Shawn