Lake Roxen is quite close to where I live, and is one of my favorite haunts.  I'd ridden there several times last summer and had even taken there a couple of times, including the time when we went to Svartåmynningen Nature Reserve. Today, I set off to Roxen, to see if it would have frozen over, as the temperature had been below freezing consistently, over the weekend.  After my previous experiences with falling on ice,  I equipped my bike with studded tires, which offers suprisingly impressive levels of grip on icy surfaces.  I also used my Topeak pressure guage to ensure that the tires were inflated to only 22 PSI and 25 PSI (forward and rear), to ensure better grip. Yup, though the effort may be slightly more with under-inflated tires, the enhanced grip is well worth the effort, in icy conditions.

Continental Spike Claw 120, the cheaper variant of the Spike Claw 240.  It has 120 spikes, running along the sides, offering good grip and cornering, without adding too much to the rolling resistance.

I hadn't ever ridden this route in winter, so I saw these places under snow for the first time!

European route E4, which runs from Sweden to Finland.

Lake Roxen had indeed frozen solid.  It looked quite beautiful.

I could see footprints and even some bicycle tire prints on the thin layer of snow that covered the ice, but I was content to photograph it from the safety of a pier, rather than stepping on it!

I rode to a second pier, where I spotted some bicyclists.

One dare-devil biker wanted to cross a section of the lake on the bike, and ride up to the road.  It was less that a hundred meters of riding, but again, I was content to wish him luck and photograph it and refrained from attempting it myself!

The marker marks the point where the waterline ends.  He's made it!

And he makes it to the road, without incident.

I evaluated my newly purchased binoculars, for a while and commenced my ride back.  When I was shooting light trail pictures on Route 580 in Livermore, CA, I'd decided that the bridge over the E4 would be a nice place to try some light trail photography, so that was my next stop. I took a bunch of shots from a bunch of angles.  It wasn't super easy and I had to trudge along the bridge with my bike and extended tripod.  This is the best picture I came away with, but realized that I could easily get a far better shot from dead center of the bridge. It was cold and my fingers were complaining, so I decided to do more shooting on another night.  It would look quite spectacular to get the light trail, with a clear and starry sky as the backdrop, I think.   I got myself a nice cup of hot chocolate on the way home, and called it a day, on a happy note.