Iowa Mountains

Nothing spectacular to report here. No new ground breaking news. No sweet pictures of the crap ton of money I dropped this week on sweet parts... Wait why not? Mostly cause it's Friday night and I as well as you can wait. Considering nobody is reading this yet, what do you care? Anyways I had a good ride to work today. Nothing spectacular just about an hour and a half total to and from work. I was a little bored with the usual snow drifted bike path in Coralville so I started looking around. Mostly all I see is ice, and some snow. Then as I pop off the path I decide to cut across the street.

Things have been all snow, melt, snow, melt around here recently. You know the process. The powder flies, you pull out the XC skis or snow shoes or whatever you poison. But that hasn't been working on a consistent basis recently. So back to the street. All the snow we have has about .5-1in. of powder over a nice solid frozen/packed base. Pretty optimal for snow biking really. As I cross the street I just roll right over the curb as there is a nice amount of ice/snow pack to eliminate the curb.

Now I am just riding down that nice little strip of snowy grass towards someones driveway when I see the giant snow pile they've been working on so far this winter. This nice pile of snow is all their hard work they've put in shovelling their driveway. Now I think time to ride around it...now why would I do something stupid like that?! Everything is all nice and packed and icy, let's just roll it and see what happens. Boom! I pop right over. Now that was fun. Now the half mile stretch of neighborhood before the next bike trail (currently an ice skating rink) becomes more interesting.

About 10 snow piles and one nice decorative rock in the yard later, I am back to the ice rink of a bike trail. Luckily it is only another half mile to the shop. As I roll out of tunnel under the interstate and climb the tiny riser ice rink path a behemoth snow mound is right before my eyes! I totally get a little trigger happy and pretty much charge right for it. I get on top and look around the top. This pile is about 50-60 ft long of frozen perfectly built mountainous ridge line. All these years of snow biking and I have never ridden such a nice snow pile.

These things have been sitting in front of my eyes and I have never taken advantage of them. My recomendation to you is go to you closest local grocery store, mall, Wal-Mart (not to buy anthing just hold you horses) and ride some of those giant snow piles! You will be surprised how amazingly fun they are. These will now forward be referred to as Iowa Mountains. We don't have mountains in Iowa. But we sure do in winter. Go ride some and see what you've been missing!