In a rut

I figured out the main part of what makes the back roads feel so squirrelly when there's more than an inch or two of unplowed snow on them. I think that if my path cuts across car tire tracks at a slight angle, the front wheel cuts over, but the rear doesn't (probably because it has more weight on it); it just stays in the previous rut. So I wind up dog-tracking badly, back wheel sliding sideways, for a few feet until I pull it back upright. So I stay upright but I wind up all over the road.

This is only really a problem on the gravel road part which doesn't get plowed until much later, and as I only ever encounter 4 or 5 cars in the 4 miles of gravel, on the one day in 2 or 3 weeks that I have those conditions, I just pull over when there's a car coming, so that I don't run the risk of winding up in front of him as he's passing, or even falling. Once I get onto the paved road where there's more traffic, there's no such problem and I can hold a line fine.

I am sort of wondering whether I should think about a fat-wheeled beater bike with knobbies on it for those days; I think it would handle better.

Because someone asked

Photo album of my bike as it is currently configured.
There are some captions describing equipment a little. If you enjoy this album, it must be a really boring day at work today.

Gave in to disposability

I gave up and ordered another Brother color laser printer last night. At $200, I'll be saving money even if I just take the toner carts out and throw the printer away (the 4 carts it comes with are $270 by themselves). In reality I'll find somewhere to stash the thing as a backup. At our level of use, two carts of each color plus refills when they are available (soon I think) should last us a lot of years.

If you're interested, it's a nice printer for $200, though it's a bit large. I took that as a plus personally; the tiny little printers probably have tiny little gears to break, tiny underpowered motors, and tiny, tight-turned paper paths that are prone to jam. Also the really small ones have ridiculously small toner cartridges; the little Samsung I looked at prints less than 1000 pages per set of cartridges.

And if anyone has a Canon inkjet printer that takes the type BCI-6 carts, I've got a whole box of refill ink and supplies you can have, just ask. Our printhead finally failed after a number of years.