WINTER BIKING

Author's note: We have had frost on the truck's windshield several days already here in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. That made me think about the upcoming winter season, and how much different I look at things since the days when I was growing up here. This blog looks at one of the ways we coped with the snowy season as kids.

Ice Doesn’t Stop Innovative Michigan Youths
By: Ray Hansen

Growing up in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the kids I hung out with were an innovative bunch. Seems like we were always solving some kind of challenge, or learning some sort of woods-craft. We often practiced what we called “survival techniques”, and could whittle whistles from poplar branches, create and run a snare line for rabbits, or preserve minnows to be used for brook trout fishing by salting them.

Something that vexed us one winter was how to navigate icy roads on our bicycles. We wanted to get to the skating rink, or down to the frozen quarries to fish through the ice, but what if we wanted to go there after school during the week? The walk was just a bit too long for most weekdays. We needed a way to ride our bikes on ice.

The solution came to us on a day when we were poking around one of the abandoned houses that weren’t so uncommon in those days. One of the guys found a long piece of what was called “stoker chain” back then, and naturally we took it back to an old chicken coop behind one of the gang’s homes, where we stored these simple treasures.

Whether by consensus, creative inspiration, or by comparing our bike tires to car tires which used chains for traction during the winter, we hit upon an idea: make tire chains for the bikes!

The rest was simple. A length of stoker chain, a piece of bailing wire, and a pair of pliers were the only necessities for the project. We wrapped the chain in a tight spiral around the bike tires, and connected two free ends with a tightly twisted piece of bailing wire.

This experiment didn’t provide traction like riding on dry pavement, but it worked! You just had to take it a little easier than you would while riding in the summer. Of course, telling kids to “take it easy” was as futile as telling country dogs not to chase cars. Better to let the bumps on the head from crashing on icy roads teach them!
Copyright Ray Hansen, 2008