Mountain bike tires over Snow covered bridges

make a strange hollow crunchy sound in the 20F degree early morning echoing across the upward sloping sparsely white hills and bouncing off the frozen trees. Early yesterday morning I decided that the ground was frozen enough to support a local ride without doing damage to the trail. I parked at Ballsberry's house, he was not home so could not partake in a little early morning way, way, way sub arctic Bill adventure. I took the spur trail in from the road and quickly felt the sticky frozen surface through the tires, the feeling reminded me of being a kid on a bike in North Eastern Connecticut in the early and late winter. The ground in spots was covered in an inch or so of white and the trail was hard petrified worm dirt an inch deep solid. Weird how the strangest things come to your head while riding in the trail alone, one minute I'm thinking that it is chilly out then I realize as a kid I was on a bike too and for whatever reason more free. Over and down the rollers along the lake no adjustments needed, keep pedaling. There were fresh deer tracks on the trail pretty much the whole way around the loop, sometimes more than one deer both in the direction I was going and towards me. At the little creek crossings I also noticed small mammal foot prints, squirrel, coon, possum? I got around in an hour or a minute less or more and took the spur back out which got me home for coffee.