Triumph Daytona 675 in the snow.. The fun of touring Europe heading into winter.

A few times in my travels I got some surprise snowfall (one of the problems of touring Europe towards the end of the year).

Keeping warm in the snow

It’s one of those bits of adversity which really make the journey memorable (so long as you don’t get hurt too badly of course). If you get stuck in snow there’s really not much you can do except wait it out, failing that slowing down (first gear isn’t low enough!), never using the front brakes, holding on tight and struggle through it.

But there are options (if you have the option to prepare properly)!

The following creative types deserve points for coming up with something functional that lets them take a bike at reasonable (or in some cases-crazy) speeds.

Sports bikes on ice

Insane is about all I can say for these guys, I pity the poor sod who had to painstakingly put the bolts/spikes etc through the tyres, but the results speak for themselves.

Here’s one by a guy named Sjaak Lucassen, a crazy “ride everywhere in the world on an R1″ guy (I’m not kidding when I say “everywhere”). He took a bunch of tek screws to a motorcycle tyre. Also interesting is his technique for changing a sportsbike wheel via leaning against something without a centre stand.

Anyhow, it’s a pretty standard practice for the strange class of nutcases who race motorcycles on ice. See Dieseljo.com’s guide to ice racing.

Home made ice tyres

This looks like it seems to work ok too:

Husqvarna military Motorbike

Moving on to options that can work with normal tyres: From ADVRider‘s forum there’s these beasties:

Allgo’s custom motorcycle snow chains. He was talking of making a bunch of them (check the thread) but the parts he made them from seemed to be a bit scarce.

More homemade stuff: chains

Allgo's custom motorcycle snow chains

Here’s the creator fitting them on a pretty snowy trail.

Chris/Allgo's motorbike snow chains

If you want something you can buy (albeit quite expensively), then perhaps these are the go: MV snow claws.

Snow claws for motorcycle

Perhaps a bit better suited to road tyres for motorcycles.

So a tank and a motorcycle have a roll in the hay..

And to end on something completely different: if you aren’t particularly attached to having wheels on your motorcycle, the boffins at AD Boivin have come up with this type of creation:

The Explorer Smart All Terrain Systemwhich allows you to turn your motorcross bike into a snow bike.

A video of it in action here:

Looks like fun.

And for the pedal version there’s the Ktrak Snow cycle:

Update: Just came across this very old school idea:

This is how we do it OLDSCHOOL!

I got back from my most recent touring and then had to sort out what to do with the bike. Tossing up whether to try and sell it in a short time was complicated by the need to get something fixed under warranty. The day I was due to drop it at the shop, London had some very heavy snow (reported as “The heaviest snow in 18 years” but actually wasn’t but still enough to grind everything to a halt).

Snow on the bins shows just how much fell.

So instead of riding in the snow Scott and I had a snowfight, built a Calvin and Hobbes inspired snowman and explored the surrounding snow covered countryside.

Scott next to my snow smiley on the Northwood golf course.

The fix and store bike plan got delayed a day or two and I ended up hiring a van on wednesday to get the bike up North to the warm, dry garage of my mate Chris (thanks again Chris!).

My Daytona 675 tucked in for a roadtrip.

Got back at 5 in the morning or there abouts and had to be awake waiting for my mountain bike bag to be delivered (another thing that had been delayed thanks to the snow). Luckily it turned up and I rushed to pack, sort and chuck out ready for my flight to Hong Kong.

After a stopover in HK to see friends, I am finally over the jetlag (flying against the sun is always harder).

HK skyline from Tunde's place.

It’s strange going from snow to summer, especially with the crazy bushfires in Victoria that have sadly killed so many people. I’ve been up close and personal with bushfires while growing up (have done a bit of burning off and fire fighting on occasion) and the footage of the massive fires in Victoria is quite scary.

Next up I’m looking at getting a bit settled back in the wonderful land of Oz.