We got about 8” of wet heavy snow in the past 24 hours. After the skiers and snowshoers had run a few tracks, this was very rideable on the fat bike. It’s a lot harder to ride in the dry powdery stuff.
More snow is in the forecast for the next few days. My neighbor does the grooming on our local trails - he’s planning to do a fresh groom on Sunday night once the storm has passed… will be some epic snow riding on Monday 
Today turned out to be the best day of our winter, a bit of an unusual strong and cold easterly but above freezing (although the wind made it feel like below) and dry. The perfect day for a long cycle. It’s that once of year event though so it was a short one for me. I only stopped once though, in that strong easterly it felt 
I’m enjoying the pictures and descriptions of all of your rides here while I sit in my brother-in-law’s house in Southern California (Orange County having relocated from the desert where we were earlier) waiting for his young’uns (and my teenagers) to awake for Christmas morning as it rains and I take the last bite of my “breakfast,” about a third of a lemon meringue pie.
That looks pretty special! 
Driving home from brother-in-laws house and stopped to clean up large branches from the biking lane along the state highway:
Ran over them earlier this week and wanted to use this road for Festive 500 riding this week.
And Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas to you and everyone too 
53 miles in Austin, Tx. It was about 70 degrees 
A mile for every year for me today and 4 more 
We headed to Loch Leven in Fife where we stopped for a lose crank on my mate’s bike. Once stopped it gave us a photo opportunity. My other mate who took the photo carefully placed his back to the sun so he could get the loch in the background.
At least it was better than the constantly changing forecast of heavy snow or heavy rain. We saw a few lighter rain drops, sleet and flakes but nothing heavy.Another day in paradise and today it was time for the BIG one!
I went out from Lower Paia directly on the beach. From the beach, the beautiful road snakes up for around 20k before you even reach the mountain in question. The gradient is nice and steady throughout with nothing really of notice, but also no dips or flats either.
The first 20k are tropical, with humid climate and palm trees. Super beautiful!
After reaching around 4000ft, things start to look a lot more alpine! A lot of ranches with livestock and it looks super similar to Switzerland or France.
Here a mini-Alpe d’Huez starts, with over 20 beautiful switchbacks.
At around 6000ft, that makes way for a vegetation, that looks a lot more akin to sierra Neveda.
Around 7’000ft in, you enter the Haleakalā national park. Bring your credit card, or they won’t let you in. I had to wait 10 minutes in a queue, which ruined my time (that’s the official story, in reality it was a very welcome rest).
When I finally made it, I was super happy, despite it being much less painful than expected (still super challenging).
The best thing was my wife accompanied me all the way, to pass me food and drinks, and also so I didn’t have to ride down the mountain again.
Today I tried to save energy for the coming week by not riding too much extra: to the mountain, back from the mountain. Only up and down the mountain.
Jacobs ladder, Tasmania. 1200m in one go
That looks scary / amazing 
I wouldn’t mind going up but down 
Wow - that looks truly amazing. Thank you for sharing.
On yesterday’s ride one bloke said he’d go out on Tuesday but someone else said they were going out today (Monday) as it was forecast to be a dry lull between the storm. You guessed it was misty wet and 
. Now we are back 3 hours or so it has actually turned into the mild and dry day forecast and tomorrow after a damp start isn’t looking as bad as yesterday’s forecast. At least the forecast got today’s light winds right
Taking advantage of the mild and dry weather 
we headed up to a cafe in Falkland (a pretty little village and another place in the Kingdom of Fife which was Scotland’s capital at one point)
So we went on to Milnathort for another cafe (which was also closed) so we headed to Kinross and a open Cafe. Milnathort and Kinross are quite nice places too.
Milnathort
Kinross
OT, I quite like the village at the other end of Fife Culross (Coo Ross) which was also a Scottish Capital as the current Urban Design Guide uses it as a perfect example of Urban Design, naturally controlling vehicle speed (It was built in the 15th Century or there abouts ).
@Aeroiseverything a cyclist way of saying Mele Kalikimaka!
Started the day with some km from virtual ride last night:
Rough day outside in the cold, wet weather. Took a pic while I stopped for the rain:
Reminded how much I hate changing a tire in the cold And that took me to 25+% of the Festive 500:
Had planned to do more, but stopped at a bike shop to buy a plastic fender. And warm up. And of course the changing of the flats.
Well the forecast for Tuesday was way wrong. Even last night they were forecasting rain, murk and wind. So I thought I’d make today a rest day but I woke to parting skies. So to make up for lost time I went at a high tempo to Stirling.
