It’s officially the time of year where increasingly dread checking the weekend forecast for fear of disappointment. The time of year when cold temperatures and precipitation conspire to force too many hours indoors on the trainer watching shitty movies or pirated CX race feeds. It’s also the time of year when we venture out only to discover that the forecast was quite a bit worse than anticipated. This past weekend tilts toward the latter category: the forecast declared just a 10% chance of rain on Saturday morning so with temperatures in the 40’s and several of us sporting new winter bike fender setups we decided to take a shot at sneaking in a proper team ride.

The plan was to head toward River Road where a few of us were completing a round of Cycle-Smart prescribed power tests (more on that in our last Daily Grind post). Of course as luck would have it, and regardless of what the forecast predicted, we found ourselves in the midst of a proper downpour before even escaping the City. And when we arrived at the GWB soaking wet (but warm thanks to one of our favorite pieces of team kit) we discovered the bridge almost completely enshrouded in low hanging cloud cover with only the upper towers visible in the distance:

Fortunately the conditions weren’t too bad all things considered - we’ll take 40’s and raining over last weekend’s real feel of 16 degrees any day of the week. So we carried on through the gentle misting rain, telling stories and shooting the shit while taking in the ‘bridge to nowhere’ views on offer as we passed back underneath the George Washington Bridge:

Ultimately on this day we didn’t ride particularly far, especially with the power tests inflicting some mid-ride pain. But the foggy miles were sufficient to remind remind us that even with the potholed roads and winter weather, cycling in New York City remains pretty special. Though for full disclosure the weather was utter shit on Sunday and we were all stuck on our trainers so perhaps riding in NYC is equally easy to love and hate on any given day. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯