Well it's here, and I'm not talking about the festive season, the White Illumination on the streets, or the boozy Bonenkai (year end parties), it is...the icy season.
I've never known a place like this, for all the good things Sapporo has going for it, the winter is tough. The roads are generally unsalted, and the sidewalks 99% unshovelled or cleared. What you get is a narrow sidewalk lane where people have trampled the snow down into a packed uneven obstacle course in the end. As for the streets, they waver between bare, icy, bubbled ice, black ice, or snow lanes right now. For most people, it is 'shoganai', it cant be helped..but or a person who bikes and needs to commute for his sanity, it is the saddest time of the year.
To date I've managed to limit my hard crashes to two. The first when a taxi wasnt going to stop for me to bike across the intersection (which was green for ME to go through), the second being two days ago when I hit black ice at a red light and hit the ground on my hip and elbow, still clutching the handlebars it happened so fast. My post travel budget doesnt allow for $180 for 2 spike tires, so for now my thick mtb tires will have to do, along with a healthy dose of patience.
Soon though, the streets will get worse. The city's snowploughs wait for the first big pile of snow to get packed down into ice citywide, then they scrape the top layers off. Surely this makes sense in some office, somewhere. So it packs down, and the odd time that it melts a little, it refreezes into an uneven hell, unride-able to a bike tire. The sidewalk cleaning machines come through and move the snow to the side, creating the famous 'snow walls', and thereby creating equally famous 'blind corners' for the ever speeding drivers to fly into then skid and slide when a pedestrian makes them hit the holy shit brakes.
The Icy Season is here, but that also means the hills are getting filled up with deep powder, ready to get torn up over the holidays, if I have gear. Heres to starting the countdown til bike-able days again......
1 comment:
I feel the same about running. The first thing I did when i got home yesterday was go for a run on the novelty snow and ice free pavements.
We are gonna have to wait until March 17th for it to clear....if the past two years are anything to go on!
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