it's... just not natural
going sideways on your bike, that is...

this is what you learn when your co-workers encourage you to take a "shortcut" through the snow covered golf course on the way home:

1) wearing amber colored sun glasses/goggles must really help when everything around you is nothing but white. sure, they may not be prescription, but when you _are_ wearing prescription glasses and you can't tell what the terrain ahead is like (oh, i guess there is a hill here, shiz) it's time to find some good, snow-blindness defeating, sunglasses/shades.

2) it is perfectly natural to go diagonally or even pretty much sideways on your bike. assuming, of course, it's really windy and icy, and or you're on the side of the hill (travelling in such a manner that gravity and lack of traction would pull you down the hill, albeit sideways). get used to it i suppose. it's not the size of the traction loss, but what you do with it that counts.

3) when you ask the x-crounty skier if you can get to the railroad tracks through that forest, and they point you in the opposite direction saying, just follow that trail and you'll end up on so and so drive... do it. lest you find yourself accidently walking in on some columbian drug lord's secret hash stash, complete with vicious looking barking dogs, barbed wire, and shifty looking dwellings. (on second thought, was that x-country skier packing heat?)

4) shortcuts are never shortcuts unless you've taken them before. and then only if they're really shortcuts.

5) circulation in the feet is good for keeping them warm. now all you need is some duct tape to keep the wind from coming in the front.

(and now you know... and knowing is half the battle)