Whatever – I’m back on the bike and finding my legs again.  I like riding again which I haven’t all season.  Hoo yeah, that first day back on the bike this month was a killer.  My heart felt like it might explode, feeble, uncoordinated legs and astonishingly little aerobic capacity.  Frankly it felt like hell.  I didn’t want to ride the next day so I slept through my alarm and drove in a panic, late for work.

Monday was better and when I got home a wheezy, sweating mess I was glad that I’d managed to ride two consecutive days and could find an excuse to drive tomorrow…wait…that’s Tuesday…if tomorrow is Tuesday, that means today is Monday thus I clearly haven’t ridden to work two days in a row.  Brain scrambled.  I dutifully put on my gear and rode today, and I fell in love with riding again.

Enthusiasm.  Inspiration.  That magic ingredient that makes life exciting.  Sometimes it’s triggered externally.  Today the gods of all things Cat-6 rewarded my pitiful summer with inspiration.  Someone to chase.

As I rode through Max Bell, I saw him in my peripheral, riding a parallel path along the ridge.  As we continued, convergence became inevitable and he dropped onto the path a few meters ahead of me.  Never one to let a good chase go unchallenged, I put my big-boy pants on and got to work.

We made good time over Deerfoot, shortcutting through the grass at the bottom and carrying a nice bit of speed with us.  He started mashing immediately, a suggestion of what was to unfold over the next 10 kilometers.  I stayed close, expecting him to peel off and head into downtown for no more reason than that’s what everyone seems to do at this point, but he pointed his wheel north.  This game was on for real.

The blue, fendered Kona set a steady pace just over 31km/h and I had to push hard to stay with him.  We rode past the Sparks center, through the bends and up to 8th where I couldn’t help but hope he’d peel off, but he didn’t.  He didn’t ease up either.  I was fairly confident I could pass him but equally certain I couldn’t do anything with it – I wouldn’t be able to pull away and would likely gas myself trying to get around him.  So I cheated.

While they may have re-paved the section of Nose Creek path between 8th and 16th ave, there’s still a well-worn path through the weeds where it used to be.  After watching him drop down from the ridge in Max Bell, I expected him to head off-road and when he didn’t, I went anyway.  It’s shorter, straighter and lacks the little hump you have to climb.  If I could maintain the pace, I could put some distance on him until at least the other side of 16th where, with any luck he’d peel off and leave me to expire in peace.

A shoulder-check half-way through Fox Hollow showed me half-right – I’d put some distance on, but I was flagging and he was still coming.  It didn’t take long for him to close the gap and ultimately pass me – fair enough.  I started to fall behind but managed to make up some ground on the little climb to the top of the course, and again on the drop down past the sub-station.  I wasn’t hanging back anymore, firmly and completely wheel-sucking - hiding in his draft and catching my breath.

Still he continued along my route, and still I followed, unwilling to concede complete defeat.  Past the 32nd connector (why don’t you turn off?!), under McKnight, onto the road and…man this guy just doesn’t stop and he’s still on my route!  Onto 4th / Edmonton Trail (why isn’t he going straight west?) and a bit of confused traffic gave me a chance to re-group and prepare.  Surely he’s not going to zip up the bus traps so this will end there and I can finally ease the pace a little.  As we rounded the final corner to the bottom of the traps, it was obvious this wasn’t over yet.  Then I saw my chance.

He stood up to climb a fraction too late and I attacked, cursing him as I went by.  “Damn, you just won’t turn off!” I said as I climbed past him.  He grinned.  I made the top of the traps ahead of him, but paid the price for it, unable to keep the lead or even latch on as he caught up and went by.  We exchanged a few pleasant words until he continued north and I hobbled my way home west.  Spent.  Exhausted.  Completely happy.

In 8900km of riding, that was one of the best commutes I’ve ever had, certainly the longest chase and the most entertaining one at that.  Damn you blue, fendered Kona for not letting up.  And thanks. Auf Wiedersehen!

I stumbled across an interview with Jim Parsons of Big Bang Theory fame, talking about how turning 40 had been his kiss my ass point.  This is who I am.  With the exception of my small cadre of loved ones, I don’t care what you think of me.  I admire that philosophy but I’ve got some work to do before I get there.

I find myself twisting under the notion that arm’s-length acquaintances or strangers might look upon my cycling addiction as chasing the trend.  I didn’t know it was a trend when I threw a leg over the saddle Best Wife’s Kijiji bike at the behest of my eldest.   Had I known that cycling is the new golf, I’d have saved myself the time and simply beat it into the twisted shape of a frustrated 5 iron and thrown it into the rough, to be forgotten like any other fad.

When I look at my introduction to riding as an adult, I don’t recall a sudden desire to get on the cycling train, to put on Lycra (I refused) or strap a piece of foam to my head and go play Lance Armstrong.  If anything, Armstrong and the rest of the Tour de Chemistry put me off.  After begrudgingly taking #1 son out for a cycle around the block, on a bike I wanted no part of, what I really wanted to do was…go for a ride on my own.  It felt like a challenge, one I knew I could push, one that might provide some health benefits if I worked at it.  The idea was too much to resist and the reward too gratifying to ignore.

Away I went in my own little quest to challenge and best myself.  The Kijiji bike died after just 40km.  The immediate withdrawal resulted in the arrival of the Rescue Bike and an addiction firmly entrenched.  To date, no cycling magazines litter the house, no whiling away the hours on internet bike forums debating sock height or which build will give me the lightest setup, no hanging around the bike shops looking for approval.

I’d like to think that was genuine, self-directed activity, but I’m not sure I can.  Perhaps my original, self-motivated ideas are anything but. Are my ideas mine anymore?

I’m annoyed. But first, kudos where kudos are due and due they are!

After threatening for the past year to switch up his route and steal my Strava KOMs, Adam made good on his word and did just that Tuesday morning. Since its creation, I’d managed to hang on to the “King of the Mountain” on a 1 kilometre stretch of my daily commute with a record speed of 52.5km/h.  That’s history now.  Not just bumped but smashed into little bitty pieces.

Sixty point four kilometers per hour.  60.4km/h!!  Are you kidding me?  A huge congratulations – I suspect that will stand for a long while before it’s topped.

Back to being annoyed. My Twitter feed has been full of what I can only categorize as anti-car rhetoric lately. With a rash of pedestrian and cyclist fatalities involving cars, trucks and most recently a cement truck, there’s plenty to be fired up about.

I like to think I ride a fair bit when I’m not afraid of falling down. I crossed off 2013’s first 1000 km on the route home yesterday (no fanfare, no shirts), I rode throughout the winter and I made it my (missed-by-that-much) goal to put more miles on the bike than the car. I’m pretty comfortable saying I’m an avid cyclist. 

This does not preclude my use of or appreciation for motorized transport however. While my car spends more time parked than driving, it’s still a valuable tool. Cars (some) are beautiful, powerful wonders of mechanical genius. If I were an oil baron, there’s no little doubt where my play money would go.  I am every inch a car guy.

Driving my car or the family hauler doesn’t make me evil, nor does riding my bike somehow bestow righteousness and blamelessness upon me. Riding a bike doesn’t infer that I run stop signs and red lights or cut off traffic, and sitting behind the steering wheel does not mean I’m trying to run you down.

Growing up, my dad used to rail about people who knew only their rights, but none of their obligations. I used to think he was missing it, but now I understand. Your rights come with inherent obligations and the more we ignore our obligations, the more our rights are challenged, eroded and re-shaped.

Take Montana for a moment. A few years ago, they did away with posted speed limits on their interstates (though the sign stated plainly a reasonable and prudent speed). I took the opportunity to experience that on my motorcycle. Did I mention that Montana is also a no-helmet law state? I know what you’re thinking – I wouldn’t be that stupid. Oh yes. Helmet-free and speed-limited only by fear (and a lack of aerodynamics) I rushed headlong down the black ribbon with only the occasional bug in the forehead. Others were not so lucky and enough fools did themselves harm exercising their right that the speed limits came back – eroding the rights of the rest. Rights without obligations.

As a pedestrian in Canada, you always have the right of way. In fact, while not well known, you have the right of way even while “jaywalking”. Makes sense – a motorized vehicle never has the right to hit you – the alternative is absurd. However…<sigh> you have the obligation to ensure that exercising your right of way is prudent at that moment. Walking up to a crosswalk, slapping the signal and stepping off the curb because it’s my right does not alter the laws of time, space, force, mass or acceleration. Your rights don’t trump physics. It is your right to activate the crosswalk lights without any need to take into account the required stopping distance of the traffic already on the road. It is your fault if you then step into the path of an oncoming vehicle that had no opportunity to stop. This isn’t Star Trek. Your rights do not include an energy shield to deflect an unwanted space/time coincident of vehicular force and mass with your own.

So there’s my Twitter feed with the cycling and driving equivalents of religious extremists, both shouting about the anti-social behaviour, idiocy and selfishness of the other. Enough already. Drivers – understand that I will not take a road position with the intent of slowing you down or irritating you, ever. If I’m in your way, it’s because my safety is at risk elsewhere in the lane. Seriously – do you really think I want to anger you into pushing me into the curb – me in my paper-thin Lycra that doesn’t even pretend to offer protection, you in a 5000 pound hunk of safety and security.  And what’s with your need to pass me at an intersection so you can then immediately turn right across my path? Surely the impending carnage is worth 3 seconds to avoid.

But you. Ahhh yes, I’m looking at you. The smug, self-righteous cyclist (and jogger and dog walker and so on). It’s your right to act just about any way you please, to dress in any fashion, colour and style that you will, to be ignorant of your surroundings and generally act like the self-appointed center of the universe. The one who suffers for your ignorance is you, not to mention the people you put at risk. You dart out into traffic because you’re staring at your iPhone instead of paying attention, texting while riding (Seriously, what the hell is wrong with you?), jogging down an unlit mixed-use path in the dark in your trendy non-reflective all-black running gear, stepping into the intersection, damn-the-consequences-I’m gonna-teach-that-driver-a-lesson because it’s your right. The list of infractions is endless – both sides – and the argument is dominated with zealots trying to out-yell their opponent while the rest of us look around embarrassed while trying to get on with the job of enjoying life.

I’m not sure I’m comfortable ascribing to the title of car guy or avid cyclist come to think of it. I’m just a car lover that loves to ride his bicycle.

*Bring on the cycle tracks and increased bicycle infrastructure!

After sending the Ridley to the hospital with a couple of broken bits at the end of March, I stopped riding.  The weather’s schizophrenic behaviour, ice patches I’m suddenly unable to negotiate, snow, rain, snow, rain…I quit.  I’m not sure what happened but it started when I tested the abrasion resistance of the Pearl jacket (and it failed).

I have, much to my chagrin, fallen over more times than I would have expected.  Certainly more times than I’m happy with.  I went down hard in my first year trying to corner much faster than I had a right to and a pedal strike sent me skittering across the pavement. I’d already flipped it over in the grass snapping off the reflector – still not sure how I managed that one. Finished out the season by laying it down in the mud and breaking my wrist. Strangely, none of this bothered me beyond the ego check and the swelling…and the bruising. And the burning…definitely the burning.

Year two I racked up the miles but spent most of it upright.  I started the season by going down in the same mud that broke my wrist but escaped unharmed – 2nd time lucky. I fell over, literally, at a stop sign as I learned to use my clipless pedals. More ego check and a broken bell. Summer ended with me and the bike intact.  A good season.

Fall and the new Ridley arrive. Fall goes well, Ridley is a rocket and I’m a happy guy. Snow comes, studded tires go on and the falling begins again. Front tire slides out in deep snow and I summersault over the bars landing expertly in a roll.  Ego suggests I take the (winter) corner at speed and I find myself skittering across the ice-clad pavement in front of morning traffic. A large piece of ice breaks away from the pathway underneath and takes my front tire with it. Down we go again.

With the exception of a bent derailleur hanger and a dented ego, there is no damage. I  chalk it all up to learning – learning to ride in deep, churned snow (don’t), learning to corner at speed on studded tires (can’t), learning to go with the flow when the surface moves unexpectedly (gonna hurt). The snow melted, the ice came and all the fun went away.

Keith / 912R commented one afternoon at the apparent grip and my comfort on the ice. It was ignorance and luck, not grip and comfort. Mother nature soon gets the last laugh.  A crisp spring day, almost no snow but plenty to be worried about as the banks on one side or the other melt and drain onto the path where it freezes into shiny, slick sheets of ambush.  I anticipate it being there, I see it there confirming my anticipation and it still manages to fling me to the ground adding more scuff marks to the Ridley and abrading holes in my beloved Pearl jacket. This is the end of my patience, the end of rationalizing the pavement kiss.

I pick my days carefully – snow, melt, freeze? Not riding. Melt, freeze? Not riding. There is  not a lot of riding in March until I can’t justify it any longer.  I’d ridden the entire winter, put a couple of thousand kilometers on in the snow and here I am being stymied by a couple of patches of ice. Bah. I ride 9 kilometers before another slippery patch sends me down and puts the Ridley in the hospital.

It stays there for two weeks waiting for the right parts to show up. I bring it home and tuck it away uncleaned and ignored for a week before leaving town. It sits idle another week. I get fatter. I return. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday I drive the car until…finally I can’t take the drive any more. I’m sick of the car, sick of the commute and can’t ignore the bike any longer.

I set out on marvelously snow-and-ice free paths after 2 months of not minimal riding. My legs are soft and disconnected from my brain. My lungs burn. The air feels thick, solid. There’s no speed to be had, no cruising at a respectable pace. Fighting for every kilometer, I barely managed posted path speeds. My heart is absolutely hammering out of my chest. I chase a distant tail light in futility, unable to keep any semblance of pace. 10 kilometers in my legs and my brain reconnect – aha! This is how we pedal. There’s still no speed. Legs burn, lungs burn, heart still pounds.

You idiot! I’m thinking.  Why didn’t you ride the Rescue bike? Why didn’t you ride the trainer? Why didn’t you do something? I stand to climb in places I ordinarily float up. The ride finishes. I’m trashed. Asthma squeezes my lungs.  Garmin says the heart averaged 170 bpm! I don’t examine average speed – I already know it’s slow.

The return trip is much the same. Much panting. Much wheezing. Much heart-pounding. Much slowness. Much standing.

It’s good to be back in the saddle. Lead legs and all.

Blizzards.  Massive dumps of snow.  Freezing temperatures.Ungodly winds.  Slogging it.  I retired the Rescue Bike at the end of September with the arrival of the Ridley X-Fire, promptly adding studs and lights so I could enjoy it through the winter.  I commuted consistently and enjoyed riding without an eye on speed or heart-rate (because it’s dark in the winter and I can’t read the Garmin).  I rode through everything nature had to offer and opted out only when the road conditions were impassable.  I had (almost) no limits.

Then March arrived.  Snowing, melting, freezing March.  From double-digit highs to double-digit lows almost back-to-back.  Chaotic, manic weather.  This wouldn’t be so bad if the paths weren’t built either on the side of, or at the bottom of snow-covered slopes.  Or if there wasn’t a big dump with many fresh, powdery inches that promptly melted, pooled and froze over.

I rode home on the 13th through puddles several inches deep and vowed that I would not ride the following day if the mercury dropped below freezing – and it did.  So I didn’t.  I stayed off the bike, annoyed at my earlier jacket-shredding fall and the unpredictable path conditions and used my time in the car to get big things, haul many things, go many places quickly.  Most of those things entailed getting parts, bits and tools for working on cars.  There’s a lesson there…

With no more errands to run and a week of glorious temperatures ahead of me, I hopped on the X-Fire this morning and headed out once more.  Stiff and sore from so much time off the bike and so much time laying under cars on the concrete floor, I was still glad to be back on two wheels.  The paths had shed some of their puddles and the going was easy aside from pedaling two weeks worth of cookie build-up.  Then it happened.

Nine kilometeres in, a short stretch of ice covering the path but a puddle I knew to be rather deep lurked underneath.  I approached tentatively and sure enough broke through the surface, getting bogged down.  Gingerly I slid the front wheel on to the grass and hobbled across.  Safe.  Pulled back on to the path, caught the last bit of shiny, polished and very slick ice and went down.  Hard.

Assuring a passing rider that I was fine, I picked myself up and noted that my brake lever had taken on an awkward angle inconsistent with it’s mounting point.  Because it was no longer attached to it’s mounting point.  Because there wasn’t one anymore.

Something’s missing here…

Great.  Wonderful.  That’s money.  Straighten the seat out, throw a leg over and discover the rear derailleur is pushed into the wheel’s spokes.  Awesome!  That’s just a bent hanger bracket though – we can deal with that with ease.  Unless of course I break it in half trying to pull the derailleur out of the wheel.  Not that I did that.  Yeah I did.

Ineffective derailleur mounting location.

While a more enthusiastic individual could have brought out the chain breaker and turned it it into a single speed, I opted to test the X-Fire’s flat-bottomed top tube, designed for those sections of the cyclocross race where it’s more prudent to carry it on your shoulder than ride it.  A one kilometer walk in stiff-bottomed cycling shoes is a lot farther than it sounds, though Adam tells me it’s not nearly as far as the 15km he pushed his bike.  Adam also provided the rescue pick-up at the Max Bell centre, keenly parked next to the City TV cameras so I could do the walk of shame in front of them.

The complete lack of traction provided by the Nokian studded front tire surprised me though I suppose it shouldn’t have.   I wasn’t carrying much speed when it washed out and put holes in my jacket either.  I’m thinking these are much more of a snow-stud than an ice stud.  Or maybe a grass stud.  Whatever – they’re not for Calgary’s March ice conditions.  Or perhaps the 2500km on them have worn them out.

So the X-Fire is with the fine folks at Ridley’s Cycle waiting for it’s new parts, which is fine.  I’m annoyed with March.  I’m tired of falling off the bike and really tired of wrecking things in the process.  Maybe I’ll put the knobbies back on the Rescue Bike and dust it off.  Or maybe I’ll just wait for March to go away.

Unfortunately, my Pearl Izumi PRO winter shell took the brunt of the fall.

The chest pocket now has custom ventilation. No damage to me though – at least not there. My knee on the other hand…

I have attempted to ride through the winter this year with a reasonable amount of success.  The mileage hasn’t added up as quickly as the summer, the ride calendar showing big gaps during the coldest periods.  There’s little doubt that riding in the winter requires more effort – physical and mental.  The biggest mental effort comes off the bike, before the ride begins.  Ugh…-15…west wind…cold and windy…I don’t need to ride…it’s going to suck…I’ll be cold…  Trying to stay out of that self-defeating space is hard for me.  My solution is fairly straight forward –each evening, I lay out all my gear and get everything packed before I look at the forecast for the morning.  If it’s been especially cold, I make sure to have the extras within reach so there’s no messing about in the morning.  Get up, get the gear on, get the pack on, get out the door.  Prudence dictates that a proper look at the current and forecast conditions is done before departure – I don’t need to freeze to death in an attempt to prove how hardy I am – but I don’t have to think about anything and all the work is done.

Extra snow = extra training! For Free!

I have however discovered my personal riding hell, that thing most likely to keep me off the bike.  Hours after a good snowfall, traffic has trampled the fresh snow into semi-packed tracks and trails along the roads.  The snow is thick now, having been compressed by so much traffic, but it is not yet solid.  The weight of bike and rider is not enough to press through to get a solid purchase on the packed ice below but we will be pushed around by the varying consistencies of snow density and the icy ruts lurking beneath.  The wheels are travelling entirely separate routes from one another as the front end pushes and plows and slides around.  This is entertaining enough on flat, quiet roads but degenerates rapidly into abject terror on descents and mortal fear on busy streets.  Climbing becomes, quite literally, impossible as the tires, despite their studs, can find no traction to propel the bike through the thick snow and eventually my speed falls below that required to maintain a rubber-down orientation.  The last big snow included a perfectly-executed over-the-high-side shoulder roll, a vain attempt at climbing via the sporadically-shovelled sidewalks and a lot of bicycle carrying.  The paths were amazingly clear and plowed.  The roads?  Not so much.  

Semi-packed snow, ice-rut foundation, dense and super slick. My version of cycling hell.

So – the how.  How do I ride in when it’s snowing and blowing and cold out?

• The biggest thing is simply to do it.  Just get on the bike and ride, ignoring that voice screaming all sorts of objections.  Ignore people that use words like stupid or idiot.  That’s number one. 
• Layers – like any other outdoor winter activity, staying warm is all about the layers
  •      A light, thin Merino wool long-sleeve as a base
  •      Pearl Izumi Pro Thermal long-sleeve jersey
  •      Pearl Izumi Pro Softshell jacket
  •      My usual stretchy shorts or bibs
  •      MEC Roubaix tights to about -13C
  •      driWear Performance Thermal Pantsunder the Roubaix below -13C
  •      A toque (of course)
  •      Liner / glove combo when it’s -5C or warmer
  •      The venerable Lobster mitt below -5C
  •      Thick Smartwool or Wright winter running socks, whatever is clean…ish
  •      Northwave Celsius Arctic cycling shoes
  •      Clear glasses – spend most of the winter riding in the dark.

Northwaves, lobster mitts, goggles and come cleaning gear.

I was dubious of the Pearl’s ability to keep me warm in Calgary’s winter but it has continued to surprise me, time and again.  Those three items  – the Merino and two Pearl layers leave me sweating more days than not.  My own tendency is to ride hard so I might be warmer than someone riding a little more relaxed.  No question that my legs and hips get chilly when it’s really cold.  The Roubaix / driWear combination is just not enough to slow down the windchill effect.  I’ve got a pair of unlined GoreTex rain pants I’ll try over top the next time I can’t talk myself out of riding when it’s RBC – Really Bleedin’ Cold. The bike – what about the bike?  I’ve chosen to continue riding the Ridley through the winter though I’ve been told that’s unfair to the bike.  The folks that made it don’t think so:

@forgedcyclist And a nice place to ride your bike! How do you like the X-Fire with discs? *BV

— Ridley Bikes (@Ridley_Bikes) January 22, 2013

but I do expect that grime in the drivetrain will shorten its life.

Luckily – or not – I seem to be much slower in the winter so I rarely get onto the big ring – one less part to worry about changing in the spring.  I fully expect to replace the chain, rear sprocket and inner chainring but it’s not like I’m riding Dura-Ace or SRAM RED level components – the parts are relatively inexpensive.  I wash the bike regularly, more when the weather is back and forth between freezing and melting (which provides its own set of riding challenges).  It’s an opportunity to check the bike over for loose fasteners, damage, chips and so on.  It’s also a key piece of extending the life of the drivetrain – washing the grit out of it. For chain lubrication I’ve stayed the course with the usual red-top bottle of Teflon dry lube.  Dry attracts less grit and grime and keeps the overall drivetrain cleaner.  I scrub the chain down with a brush during its bath until I can handle it without getting dirty.  Add one drop of lube per roller, cycle it and let it sit until the next morning, then spend a minute or two back-pedalling the chain through a rag to remove the excess.  When it’s wet out, I’ll spray some all-in-one cleaner/ lube onto a rag and give the chain a wipe to keep the surface from rusting.   

Studs, but only in the center.

 I bought some Nokian IceSpeed studded tires which improved things dramatically but they are not a panacea – they do not replace dry pavement and slicks, nor do they replace common sense.  They have no studs on the sides, only the middle, so leaning into an icy turn will not go well.  I know this.  Otherwise, they provide a healthy amount of winter traction for the conditions I encounter most days, day-after big snow being the major exception.  That’s it – other than extra attention paid to the drivetrain and some studded tires, the bike is as-delivered.

There you have it – one man’s recipe for Winter Riding Success.  This is not a set of directions to tell you how you should approach riding through the winter.  Rather, this is how I managed it.  I’ve skipped out on some of the brutally cold days admittedly – I’m good down to -20C, with windchill to -30C but that’s it.  The admonishment you’re too old to develop character through athletic feats, a response received when trying to figure out how to ride the semi-packed snow, drove home the awareness that with an entire household depending on me to put food on the table, I don’t need to break my collar bone (or worse) trying to prove to myself how hard-core I am. 

I figure if I can do it, anyone can.  It takes more prep than going for a quick spin in the summer and getting past the mental obstructions thrown up takes some effort but really, it’s not that hard.  Layer up and get out there (or don’t – your call really).

Many an idea flowed through my synaptic gaps over the intervening weeks, but none seemed capable of firing the circuit to actually sit down and write.  There’s the success of the Pearl Izumi P.R.O. winter layers I snagged through a deal on Amazon – a huge, smashing success if I’m honest.  I wouldn’t ever have guessed that 2 flimsy thin layers of whatsit material would be capable of keeping me thawed through Calgary’s winter but I was so wrong.  My usual riding attire consists of a long-sleeve Merino wool jersey – super thin, you hardly know you’ve got it on, my layered Pearl jackets and a toque (and helmet) on top.  The coldest temps I recorded were in the high sub-zero teens…or is that low teens.  Numerically higher, but colder like -20C plus whatever wind-induced chill in addition to the cycling induced wind chill.  I continue to arrive sweaty, without fail. 

My legs aren’t as warm but they’re typically dressed only in the MEC Roubaix pants and on the coldest days some Driwear long underwear.  I’m not a fan of the latter to be honest – they feel like they trap moisture leaving me clammy by the time I get to work.  The Roubaix on their own are okay but when it’s nudging -20C, despite being warm and sweaty up top, the legs have gone from chilly to plain cold.  I might be able to tough it out for 60 or 75 minutes but that last bit would be painfully miserable.  I tried wearing my Gore-Tex rain pants over top but that led to similar cold-clammy end-results.  Need to keep trying stuff out but in the meantime, of the 420km I’ve managed this year, the Roubaix have held their own.

New, or mostly new, are the Northwave Celsius Arctic GTX (what a mouthful) winter shoes…or boots.  Whatever.  They’re great! </Tony-the-Tiger>  From multiple layers of socks inside the Sidi summer shoes with home-made duct-tape covered sock covers to simply socks in the Northwaves.  Less bulk, less weight and warmer!  They’ve performed flawlessly thus far – better than expected – but active temperature rating is important, especially the active bit.  The sizing is entirely out to lunch on the Northwaves but there doesn’t seem to be any sort of consistent Euro to US sizing conversion.  My Sidis are Euro 45Ms, the Northwaves are also 45s and my plain old shoes are 10.5.  The Sidis list a conversion as being size 11 and the Northwaves claim they’re size 12(!)  They’re not – they’re both 10 ¼, maybe 10½.  They’re also great footwear choices, size conversion anomalies be damned.

I’ve continued to mile-up the Ridley X-Fire Disc through the winter of course.  It’s now sitting with a little over 2200km on the clock, the bulk of it in the snow.  Actually at the moment it’s sitting with the dealer having a noisy bottom bracket dealt with as it started making unhealthy-sounding clicking / popping noises in the last couple of weeks.  Didn’t seem to affect its performance (I can do that all on my own thanks) at all but it wasn’t going away either.   Hopefully they’ve got it sorted and we’ll be back in the saddle for Wednesday – just in time for the latest round of cold temps to dissipate back to something slightly more pleasant.  I love this bike – I’ve put more miles on it since October than I managed in all of 2011.

I’ve read many things that I wanted to respond to but most end up forgotten.  One managed to stick in my mind, like a sliver that hasn’t worked its way back to the surface yet.  I stumbled across an article about winter riding written by a fellow Calgarian but this one left me cold.  Don’t wash your bike in the winter.  Bearings hate water and they hate ice more. 

Well that’s just about the stu….<whoa…easy there….> fine.  That particular bit of advice seems to have been written tongue-in-cheek – I can think of no other rational explanation for such an idio <hey…that’s enough…play nice>…sigh.  Right – okay. 

Here’s the deal.  Bearings do hate ice and water (in the summer too).  However they, along with your chain, sprockets, cranks, wheel assemblies and paintwork also hate salt, sand and other bits of flotsam and jetsam that find their way onto the roads and pathways.  Not washing your bike is tantamount to bicycle abuse in the winter.  As a mechanic, bicycleenthusiast and all-around cheap-skate (see earlier comment about duct-taped socks as shoe covers); I can’t fathom not washing the…shit off your bike on a regular basis.  Granted, don’t use a pressure washer on your bottom bracket or your wheel bearings, but that advice applies in the summer too.  I suppose if you lack the facilities – IE your bike won’t fit in the shower – then perhaps washing it routinely will prove tough.  From a maintenance philosophy, washing the bike gets me hands-on over the entire bike.  Loose fasteners, cable adjustments, nicks in the paint, spoke tensions and so on and so forth.  It allows one to address maintenance issues while they’re loose screws and not broken or missing parts.  Don’t wash your bike…sheesh.

Enough.  Tune in next time for a return to the initial purpose of this space – How and Why.

To be clear here – I’m not trying to tell you to wash your bike  – it’s just what I do and why.

light up my path

you give me sight

to carry on.

Actually no.  No you don’t.  What you do is blind me and ruin my night vision.  Oh I know, you need to be able to see where you’re going.  Strangely the rest of us manage without carrying around searchlights from a prison.  The duo beam is a nice touch too – you know, where you have one on your handlebars and one on your helmet.  What I really, truly, deep-down love though?  The duo-beam with a double-flash and            (yes, and) a forward-facing red light.

Cheap, effective, bright enough to get noticed.

Qualifier: My ride starts and ends on the road but that’s 80% or more on the relatively unlit path.  I have this set from Bontrager (courtesy the fine folks at Ridley’s).  It’s not powerful and when there’s no snow, it’s not really enough light to ride by but that’s not why I have it.  It has a seizure-inducing blink mode on it, and I ride in that mode.  Not only does it use up less batteries that way, it’s very noticeable and when I’m on the road, I want to be sure I’m noticed.  The rear light also runs in a blink mode for the same purpose – a solid red light blends in too easily with the rest of the visual noise.Now, it’s a debatable area of pathway cycling etiquette about the use of flashing lights on the path.  If we’re honest, they’re obnoxious.  I try to use the least obnoxious setting on the tail light that’s still attention-grabbing.  If I could reach it while I was riding, I’d make it solid on the pathway but considering I start and end on the road and am not flexible enough to change it on the fly, flashing it shall be.

I have been using the flashing headlight on the path and really, I have no excuse.  There’s no need for it, so tonight I turned it off on the path and fired it back up again when I made it onto the road.  Easy peasy.  However…  I don’t just go along riding on a dark path without some sort of light. Not so that I can see (I can see fine until Joe Double Searchlight Flashy-Strobe comes wheeling by), but so that I can be seen by everyone else on the path.

The other morning, I watched a light bouncing along ahead of me and made a quick estimate of our closing speed as I was on their side of the path thanks to the windrow of snow the plow pushed onto the path.  The scene in front of me was dark – a black path (on the side I’m incorrectly on), a black patch of trees ahead of me that the path winds around and the little headlight bobbing towards me through the trees.  It was not until the last moment that the bobbing light was blotted out by an unlit rider barely 2 meters away.  It was pure luck we didn’t collide though why he didn’t vocalize or ring his bell a bit earlier is beyond me.  Whatever – I was in the wrong on his side, but he was nothing more than a dark shape on a dark path on a dark background.  Foolish.  And invisible.

So – I have a headlight that I turn off on the path and a UFO light (courtesy of the one and only Lance Barrington) on my helmet that I leave on all the time.  It lets everyone else on the path know that I’m there instead allowing them to discover me through physical contact.

So there’s the pathway ninjas – runners, dog walkers and cyclists that insist on being out there in the dark without any lights whatsoever, and their polar opposites – the military surplus anti-aircraft light wearing riders and their strobe-light wearing brethern.

To the former: Look – this isn’t hard.  It’s dark out, those of you in your parka with the hood up, you’re not alone out there, there’s not enough light to make what marginal reflective strips you have on your clothing glow and we’re all preoccupied with finding the line least likely to throw us in the puckerbrush.  Please stop acting like video-game obstacles – put a $4 LED light on your chest and back or even a single wide-view one on your hip.

You…other guys.  Maybe you haven’t thought this through at all.  Sure – you can see a white rabbit sitting stock-still in the snow at 500 yards now, but we can’t see anything as you’re coming up or after you’ve gone by until our night-vision comes back.  And dear god, don’t turn your head to look at us with your helmet-mounted spotlight either – it’s bad enough we’ve been blinded on the approach, no need to force the issue as you go by.  Besides, we can’t see anything except a bright spot – no eye contact, no smile – hell, I don’t know if you’re nodding hello to a fellow winter cyclist, just looking around or intentionally trying to fry my retinas.

Here’s the deal – you don’t need that kind of light when there’s snow on the ground.  The amount of reflection, especially on an overcast morning, should be plenty sufficient to navigate the pathways well above the posted speed, in the snow.  Save that stuff for the roads – please.

We’re not however crazy, insane or obsessed (well…maybe obsessed) any more than we are the rest of the year.  Perhaps I shouldn’t say we – I am the Lorax, I speak for the winter cyclists - I only know me.  I am no more crazy now than I was when the sun was beating down from above, sweat dripping in my eyes.  I’m still sweaty, panting and working hard but now it’s all in the dark.  And that’s okay (but good heavens, if you’re going to be on the pathways while the sun is down, get a $3 blinkie light so your black bike, black pants, black jacket and black gloves don’t blend into the black path and black bunch of trees I’m staring at).

I was on my way out the door when a normally sane co-worker called out as I passed, “you’re insane man (head shake), make sure you don’t get hit out there”.  If I hadn’t been on the verge of over-heating and itching to get outside, I might have stopped to get a little clarity on this novel idea.  What do you mean “make sure I don’t get hit”?  You mean, when I’m riding my reflective-covered, flashing LED-adorned self down the street-light lit street, I should endeavor to make sure I maintain control of the cars coming up behind me?  Or that I should divine which home-bound commuter coming from behind me is fighting with his girlfriend in the passenger seat and not paying attention?  Or…or what exactly?

See, the formation of that statement – the choice of words and their position imply that if I were to get hit, I am to blame.  If I run the lights or a stop sign, change lanes without looking, turn left across traffic when it’s not clear or at a stretch (a stretch because as much of the lane as I require to ride safely is legally mine) wander about in my own lane then yes, I would be responsible for the ensuing carnage.  Being hit by a motorist because they passed me and then turned right across my path, or an on-coming car making a left, an exuberant lane change that side-swipes me, pulling out of the parking lot or side road without looking or simply not paying attention – these are not my fault.  I assure you as the one completely exposed, I’m doing my best to get to my destination in the same condition I left.  As an alternative, I propose the following:  when you’re driving, don’t hit a cyclist*.

What of the constant assertion that we’re insane?  We’re nuts!  I must respectfully disagree.  I’m not the crazy one here.  I’m about to take the 600 calories I ingested with that doughnut and cookie I ate earlier and consume it as energy and heat during my ride home.  Now, I really ate too much and the 450 calories I’ll burn off will leave me with a calorie abundance so perhaps I’ll shovel the sidewalk and the driveway.  You however are, by yourself, going to jump into your SUV that gets an (optimistic) 22 miles per (IMP) gallon and drive the 15 kilometers home (how’s that for mixed units?).  In the process you will – at the very least – consume  (give or take) 16,300 calories of energy through the 1.95 litres of gasoline you consume. Sixteen thousand.  You may arrive 10 minutes earlier than I do so those 16,000 calories aren’t without benefit I suppose.  450 kcals vs. 16,000.  I can ride home on your rounding error.  Who’s the crazy one?  Now, what are you gonna do with that doughnut and cookie you ate?

*or a group of cyclists, pedestrians, joggers, runners, speed-walkers or really, anything or anyone.

the math for anyone that cares:

• One litre of gasoline contains 35 megajoules of energy
• 1 megajoule equals 238.845 kcalories
• 35 megajoules equals 8359.6 kcalories
• 22 IMP mpg equals 7.7 litres per kilometer.
• 15km / 7.7 l/km equals 1.95 litres
• 1.95 litres x 8359.6 kcals equals
• 16,301 kcals