Cycling on the Lake

Since there's not enough snow to ski I decided maybe I should carry on cycling. When I first came to Sweden, 38 years ago, I cycled all year around but in those days I was much younger, and fairly sure I was  immortal. Now I know better, so this time around I decided to get some real winter tyres for my bike (see extra).
It was minus 10C so I wasn't going to cycle so far but I wanted to try the new tyres. I was impressed with how well they work on icy roads with a normal amount of grit down. I kept it down around 15 kmh but really couldn’t feel any difference to summer cycling. Moving onto our smallest local road there was a lot of bare ice with a bit of grit in the middle.  If I got off that grit I could feel the wheels starting to glide sideways a bit. 
Finally I couldn’t resist trying it out on the lake. After all, how many people get the chance to cycle around on an ice-covered lake?  More than 2 or 3 cms of snow meant it just didn’t work. Bare ice was too slippery. However, around 1 cm of snow gave a really good grip and on the rough ice of a snow-scooter track it also went well.
Once I got home I had another task. The lights on the fan over our cooker had stopped working and we suspected the switch was faulty as both lamps stopped working together and if a bulb had blown we’d still have one lamp working. To cut a long story short I eventually took the whole thing down, cleaned it (yuk!), and stripped it down to its parts. Couldn’t find anything to fix. Traced the current through the whole system - it seemed to flow just as it should.
So everything was working, except the lamps.  We changed a bulb - bingo - light! We changed the other light - same result. 
If I’d tried a new lamp right at the outset I’ve had saved myself 3 or 4 hours work.
On the other hand I now know exactly how the whole fan works and it is the cleanest it’s been since it was installed around 7 years ago.

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