Playing with new toys in the snow

After a couple of months of waiting, my new Salsa Mukluk 2 snow bike finally arrived this week! On Wednesday, I got it put together. I kept all the parts as what comes stock on the bike, except I swapped out the black Surly rim strips for orange, the black grip clamps for orange, and added a pair of orange BMX pedals. The gold color of the Mukluk 2 looks kinda orange, but I wasn't quite as taken at first with the gold/orange combination as I had hoped, but it's kinda growing on me now.

I then headed straight out to the Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail for the bike's first spin. The snow cover on the Towpath was still pretty good, but the day's warm temperatures made the top layer pretty soft, so that gave the Mukluk's Surly Nate tires plenty to grip on. I did a quick spin up to Highland Road and back, taking a little over an hour for the 9-1/2 miles. Needless to say the bike was a blast to ride.

I took this opportunity to try out another new toy, the Garmin Virb Elite video action camera. Garmin is a newcomer to the action cam market, but they've used their head-start with GPS knowledge to make a cool product even cooler. In addition to taking high-def video, the built-in GPS tracks your ride, and you can easily add displays of your ride data (speed, elevation, grade, etc.) to your videos. If you've got option ANT+ sensors for cadence, heart rate, or power, you can display that data, too.

You can also set the Virb to record in time-lapse mode, telling it make your video by taking a still picture every few seconds (you can set however many seconds you want). I figured it would be more interesting to get a quick overview of my trail ride rather than watching me slog through the snow for an hour, so I set the Virb to 5-second time-lapse intervals, and here's the result:

Click here if the video above is not appearing for you.

If you're interested in seeing what a regular real-time video looks like, I also shot this quick spin around the block, and added the speed, elevation, and grade gauges:

Click here if the video above is not appearing for you.

Look for more videos of my cycling adventures using the Garmin Virb Elite in the weeks and months to come!

FYI, we've still got a Salsa Mukluk 2 in stock in size Large, and a Salsa Mukluk 3 snow bike in stock in size Small, color Red: