Off With The New and On With The Old

I was checking out the weather forecast in Thursday night for Friday morning's ride when I saw that temperatures were predicted to be pretty mild (for a January in Nebraska), and no real chances of appreciable precipitation during the work days.

Should I take off my studded tires?

I used the long range forecasts at Accuweather.com and Weatherchannel.com and saw that there may be some freezing rain this weekend, but the next couple of weeks looked pretty clear. I am looking at the Accuweather forecast now and it's showing some snow and ice on Thursday, 1/8. The Weatherchannel.com month forecast doesn't show that.

So, I decided to go ahead and take off the Innova studded tires and put back on the stock Bontrager tires that came on the bike. The studded tires are awesome in the snow and ice, but lately it's been dry on 99.9% of my paths. The Innovas also are noisy and put up quite a bit of rolling resistance. They were also a little expensive, so spending the time to change them out for at least 10 days more of dry street riding seemed economical to me. I'd like to get at least two seasons out of them.

Surprisingly, neither Innova tire had lost any studs after 106 miles. I expected to lose a few. Some were already worn down to the rubber, but in all, they still give quite a bite to whatever gets under them.

While the snow is pretty to look at, and I wouldn't mind going sledding again this season, for the purposes of cycling to work, I'd be happy if the roads stay dry and clear for the rest of the year, and the studded tires stay on the shelf in the garage until next Winter.