Pictures of my ride today,..
I went down a trail that I shouldn't aughta went down,..
What a s*it show.
9 minutes my ass, it took my over an hour.
There were dozens of mud puddles that just kept getting worse.
I ended up dropping the bike more than ten times.
The front wheel would pick up thick muck that would get jammed in the fender and the wheel wouldn't turn.
I used a stick three times to try and pick out the crusty mud.
I finally got to the paved road and my tire was buzzing away from all the muck. The bike was drawing 850 Watts at 8 kph and I had to pedal just to keep it going.
Then it occurred to me to remove the fender brackets to get more clearance, so I found another stick on the side of the road, removed my fender brackets and scraped out about 5 pounds of hardened mud.
So, it was a pretty good day. I learned more about my bike and got to practice self recovery.
Nothing broke and I got a new feel for my bike.
It feels really strange when your tire locks up but you still keep moving forward in the goo, but you can't steer and end up falling over.
I didn't actually fall myself, I just dropped the bike when it slid out from under me.
I might try that trail again tomorrow.
I'm thinking that if I keep my speed up to about 25 kph I might be able to use my massive 100 pounds of inertia to plow right through it.