Pointless Prize: Maximum Smugness Points

[jrenaut]

So a few years back they were calling for a pretty big snow starting at 4 or 5AM. The night before, I met another participant at 12:01AM at the nearest Bikeshare station. We rode 2 crappy miles in the beginning of a sticky wet snow then went to bed. Is this the sort of thing you’re looking for?

[epilsk]

Yep!

[CBGanimal]

@jrenaut 194890 wrote:

So a few years back they were calling for a pretty big snow starting at 4 or 5AM. The night before, I met another participant at 12:01AM at the nearest Bikeshare station. We rode 2 crappy miles in the beginning of a sticky wet snow then went to bed. Is this the sort of thing you’re looking for?

Arlingtonrider and I resemble that remark

Love this pointless prize!

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Jessica Hirschhorn]

Yes! I did that twice last year. Watched the radar and got in just before the snow. A few laps around Landon School in the middle of the night.

[epilsk]

Hey all! Don’t forget about this pointless prize. I know many of you have been extra-smug this year and gone that extra mile to keep your streak alive (I think someone even rode a mile or so in the Galapagos Islands; gotta be a story there!) , so please share your story of the lengths you went to get a ride in. In the hope that I get more amazing stories to share I hereby modify the rules to include anyone who has ridden more than 60 days this year (instead of all days or all days but one).

The prize is a donation in the winner’s name to the bike-related charitable cause of the winner’s choice, not to mention the wave of smugness you will feel recounting your efforts to get a ride in no matter what.

I look forward to being regaled.

[Indiana]

Can I nominate my husband, Bill B [aka brownws]? I don’t know how he’d feel about the title, but maybe I can be smug on his behalf.

Before signing up for Freezing Saddles, we had planned to spend a week in Vermont in late February in hopes of finding snow. After getting into the competition and keeping up a daily riding streak, the idea of missing an entire week became unthinkable. We called ahead, but unfortunately our cross-country ski lodge didn’t have any bikes.

Bill tracked down a fat tire bike rental in Rutland, the town where our family debarked Amtrak’s Ethan Allen Express. He convinced our shuttle driver to make a stop at the bike shop to pick up bikes and haul them along with us and our cross-country skis and other assorted gear to our mountaintop lodge.

The hitch in the daily riding plan came when the fat tire bike quickly became a flat tire bike. We were caught unprepared. There were no pumps to be found on the mountain. I was resting a pinched nerve in my back and didn’t think I’d be doing long rides, thus we had only rented one fat tire and one kid’s mountain bike for our eight-year-old. (The bike shop owner had originally thought he could round up a kid’s fat tire, but was unsuccessful.) No adult spare.

So after full days of cross-country skiing and snow play Bill ended up getting in some of his Freezing Saddles rides at night on snowmobile trails and an icy—and thankfully carless—back road on a small kid’s mountain bike. He’s over 6 feet tall.

We altered our vacation stay plans for the end of the week to allow our family of three to do some properly outfitted snow biking around Rutland’s Pine Hill Park. Two fat tire bikes and one kid’s mountain bike. Lots of fun!

[epilsk]

Love it! Well done.

[Author]

Posts