Crash

I have a different post with this subject header, but have been advised not to post it. Email me if you want the text; it describes the incident in some detail for those morbid or curious enough to care. Otherwise, ride safe and wear a helmet at all times (this will be my official motto).

Other posts may appear in the future, but probably when my arm has healed - two months.

Spring

This being the first day of spring (meteorologically speaking), what else would you expect than a day of driving snow?

I've been avoiding riding in snow all winter long.  If there was snow in the forecast or it had snowed the night before, I would drive in to work.  The problem (in my mind) wasn't the snow itself, but the effect snow has on cars.  Snow creates the illusion of narrowed lanes, pushing drivers closer to other road inhabitants.  Snow creates slippery conditions, sending multi-ton chunks of plastic and metal careening in random directions.  Snow inhibits visibility, making an already unseen cyclist even more invisible.  In short, snow makes for really crappy road commuting on a bike.

I looked out at the white flocked trees this morning, mulling over whether I would hitch a ride with the girls as they headed out for their errands.  The snow had only accumulated an inch or two, but was still coming down at a decent clip.  I knew the roads and trails would be slick, as the air temperature was barely cool enough to allow for accumulation.  I also knew that this was probably the last significant snowfall of the season.  If I drove in, I would have seven or eight months of snow free commuting ahead of me.

However, today is March 21st.  It's spring, dammit, and besides, I had never made this commute in snow.  Maybe it's really not so bad.  So I put on my gear, made sure my lights were operational and blinking away, and headed out.

It turns out there are other reasons not to ride in snow. 

It accumulates on gears and derailleurs, making shifting gears a tenuous process (on an already shot bike - my rapidfire shifters currently allow me the luxury of four gears to choose from, the internals in the rear shifter having broken one cold day).  This isn't as big a deal as most days, as I had to decrease my speed significantly to handle the slick surfaces, but was annoying on longer hills.

Snow pelts glasses, covering them in slush and dropping visibility.  Eventually I had to stow the glasses, as the moisture was just fogging up the lenses.  Once the glasses went off, I went snow blind every time I looked up.  Snow is slow and lazy as it descends, but once I was traveling over 7 mph, it began drilling my eyes at a frenzied clip.  Goggles are necessary for riding in an active snow storm, a lesson anyone who has ever descended a ski hill knows.

Snow is slippery for bikes, too (shocking news to most of you), and I ended up walking a hill where my tires simply couldn't generate the necessary traction.  It also makes braking on the road a harrowing experience, as you need a LOT of lead time to brake without ditching.  Getting a heads up is tricky when your eyes get sandblasted every time you look up.

Snow is wet.  It accumulated on every horizontal surface, including my boots, and managed to sneak through the layers of waterproof outer until the icy water hit my feet.  I didn't start noticing this until the end of the ride, but on a longer trek things could have gotten very uncomfortable. 

Most of these things could have been managed if I had planned and dressed properly.  And I have to admit - it was lovely on my ride, especially on the trails.  Next year I will ride in the snow, but I think I'll keep it off of the roads.

Lena's Revenge

Many people anthropomorphize the natural world, perceiving human characteristics in non-human entities in an attempt to better understand them.  So you have people who think their car looks sad when it's dirty or people who believe their cat is a haughty princess that needs lobster in a crystal goblet to be truly happy*.  I am one of those people, but I tend to humanize things only when they piss me off.  I yell at my dog when he betrays my trust and eats half of the cat food, or yell at the grill when it stabs me in the back and runs out of propane halfway through cooking a meal.  I like to yell at things.  It's stupid, I know, but just taking the disappointment and transmuting it into quiet suffering is not my way.

Riding in winter is different than riding in summer for a lot of reasons, but one for me is that in winter, all I think about is The Ride.  In the summer my mind is free to wander a bit.  During the winter months, I think about the hills coming up, the ice I may have to ride over or avoid, I analyze every car's behavior and constantly check up on body parts to make sure they're not freezing.  This winter I also spent a lot of time thinking about Minnesota's voice.  I eventually settled on a middle aged woman with a pronounced Fargo accent; a Lena character (from Ole and Lena fame) who has the best intentions but is a little absent at times.  This is what I do for two hours a day, sad to say.

Yesterday I began my ride home excited about the warm weather.  It was nearly forty degrees, and the previous evening's ride was a blast.  I had felt like Lena was finally easing us out of winter, giving us a break from the relentless cold as spring approached.  So my heart broke a little when I covered my first mile and the sleet started.  Then the rain.  And finally, near the end of my ride, one of my cleat bolts detached, forcing a spectacular slow motion crash onto the side of the trail when I couldn't unclip from the pedal. 

Once over the humiliation of making a newb stop, I had a good laugh at myself.  And as I got back on my bike, limping home on one good pedal, I could hear Lena saying to me, "You didn't think it would be that easy, did you dear?"

*I'm just assuming such people exist.  Given the bizarre range of human behavior on display online, they statistically have to.

My Trail

Yesterday was the first truly warm day in March.  The temperature was in the 40s and the sun was shining, triggering the early spring flooding daily bike commuters love so well.  A winter of snow and ice mixed with salt and sand has begun to melt onto the paths and roads I take to and from work.  My bike has no fenders.  The predictable result is the entire front side of my body being coated with a layer of sand and saltwater.  My face is usually covered in grime as well, giving me a certain lunatic aura.  I expect riding conditions like this for the next week.

I've noticed that water is not the only thing flooding onto the paths - yesterday I ran across dozens of bikers, runner, walkers and strollers on my way home.  This is strange for me, as I'm accustomed to seeing one, maybe two bikers a day on my commute with the occasional hardcore runner.  Imagine spending three months on a series of trails virtually alone, then one day - literally in one day! - the population explodes by several thousand percent.

I don't really begrudge the new inhabitants of my trail, but I found myself a little bemused by their presence; it felt like they didn't belong on my trail.  The tall, colorful road bikes and hordes of power walking women all seemed so foreign, so out of place after a winter of solitude.  Part of me is happy to see so many people out enjoying the weather, and part of me misses the quiet of a cold morning. 

In a few weeks it will be normal to see the trails choked with bikers and joggers.  And next winter, the cycle will repeat all over again.

Icebiking

People have come up with all kinds of ways to use bikes, from the urban street couriers to wilderness area mountain riders, and until recently I was unaware of yet another way to get around on two wheels: icebiking. "Icebike" is such an impressive word, so very extreme and Gen-X sounding that you would expect it to entail dropping off of a glacier face with nothing but body armor and a BMX bike. With fireworks. But instead, it's really more about when a person bikes than where.

Icebikers are people who lack the common sense to stop riding when the weather turns cold. This can include people in Texas (apparently it does freeze there on rare occasion) and people in Alaska. It includes hipsters in rolled up jeans on their fixed gears and office workers slogging through slush on their Civias (or will be soon). It's the one kind of biking that breaks down all typical barriers because it is not defined by how or what a person rides. It is, however, a truly shared experience. There tends to be a rift between bikers of various types (people who hate spandex, people who hate geared bikes, people who hate people without helmets, etc.) just like in any subculture. When it's -10F outside, that rift simply disappears - you're all icebikers.

Because I've only ridden a few hundred miles this winter, I'm hardly an authority on the subject. I have, however, ridden in the full range of what Minnesota winters have to offer. My coldest ride this year was -17F with a windchill well into the thirties below; this was a clarifying experience. Being outside in the severe cold is not a matter of superhuman endurance or stupidity like most assume, but rather a matter of planning well. Any sort of aerobic activity will allow you to create all of the heat you need, but what's important is being able to trap that heat without sweating. Sweat makes you wet, and when you're wet the effectiveness of your insulation becomes compromised. When it's twenty below and you're an hour into your ride, getting tired and your tongue is beginning to get cold you really don't want your equipment to start failing. Layering different fabrics at different temperature break points becomes a precise science, so I'm going to detail the temperature ranges at which I use various equipment.

40° to 30° F

• Arc'teryx wind jacket (not sure what model - Arc never labels their garments for some reason)
• Light weight crew neck Smartwool shirt
• Riding shorts (MTB - they look like regular shorts)
• GORE Leg warmers
• Biking socks (short socks, basically), wool
• MTB shoes

30° to 20° F

• Cloudveil silkweight balaclava
  
• Arc'teryx wind jacket
• Light weight crew neck Smartwool shirt
• Light weight zip neck Smartwool shirt
  
• Performance cycling shorts w/ chamois
  
• Izumi AmFib bib tights
  
• Mid weight wool socks
• Lake MZ-302 boots
  

20° to 10° F

• Cloudveil silkweight balaclava
• Arc'teryx wind jacket
• Light weight crew neck Smartwool shirt
• Medium weight Icebreaker, Sport 320
• Performance cycling shorts w/ chamois
  
• Izumi AmFib bib tights
• Light weight wool slip sock, Smartwool
  
• Mid weight wool socks
• Lake MZ-302 boots
  

10° to -5° F

• Cloudveil silkweight balaclava
• Masque facemask
  
• Arc'teryx wind jacket
• Light weight crew neck Smartwool shirt
• Medium weight Icebreaker, Sport 320
• Performance cycling shorts w/ chamois
  
• Izumi AmFib bib tights
• Swiz or Ibex skiing tights (over the Izumis)
  
• Light weight wool slip sock, Smartwool
  
• Heavy weight wool socks
• Lake MZ-302 boots

-5° to -20° F

• Cloudveil silkweight balaclava
• REI Polartech cap
• Masque facemask
• Goggles
  
• Arc'teryx wind jacket
• Light weight crew neck Smartwool shirt
• Light weight zip neck Smartwool shirt
• Medium weight Icebreaker, Sport 320
• Performance cycling shorts w/ chamois
  
• Izumi AmFib bib tights
• North Face snowboarding pants
  
• Light weight wool slip sock, Smartwool
  
• Heavy weight wool socks, Smartwool
  
• Lake MZ-302 boots

There's a strange thing I've noticed after the past few months - as the temperatures get colder, my gear changes less. I think there's a point where the loss of heat is mitigated for a wider temperature window as the layers get thicker. That's certainly true for my torso, as I only trade out three relatively thin layers over a 60 degree range, mostly at the warmer end of the spectrum. Another odd thing is how thin my head layers are. The Cloudveil is truly very thin, but protects my ears and neck all of the way into the subzero temperature range. I suppose it has to do with core body heat and how it's distributed.

Civia Cycles has a good visual chart like this here. It doesn't exactly work for me, as I'm a warmer rider than normal and their recommendations rely too heavily on chemical heating pads for my taste, but it's generally very accurate.

Also, if it seems as though I really like Civia, it's more about my admiration for what they're doing. Reintroducing the bicycle as a high end utility vehicle is a great way to appeal to people who think that bikes are just for kids. Naturally, 98% of the population won't give a damn - no force on the planet will get them to ride to work no matter how nice the bike - but even getting that last two percent can make a huge difference.

Extreme Commuting

Yesterday I read this article in BusinessWeek (via No Impact Man) and it really brought into contrast some of the madness we've all seen in the past few decades - ever expanding cities, suburbs turning into exurbs as rural townships are blanketed with prefab bedroom community developments and big box 'villages'. As people crave larger houses, more land, and safer communities, they are forced farther from the cities where they must work. They spend more time in cars, their children spend more time in schools and daycares, and no one spends time in their neighborhoods. The BusinessWeek article details the trade-offs very well, but the take home message for me is that we're willing to trade our real lives for the appearance of better ones.

The question is, what is a real life? Maybe sitting in traffic for several hours a day is as real as it gets. I hope not, and I hope the past few decades of commuter culture are an aberration, and some day we will have found more sustainable and meaningful ways to spend our lives.

Missing Time

Our friend, the freakishly talented Brett Laidlaw, has started his own blog, nominally centered around locavorism (heinous neologism that it is) and the great resources available to the observant inhabitants of the Twin Cities. It's a natural fit for him, as he's a writer - a real one, who's actually written books and stuff - and has the most wonderful ability to make the most mundane events seem almost miraculous. I mean mundane in its non pejorative sense, of course, where simple and base things like walking through the woods or eating a sandwich somehow become transcendent. To an observant person simplicity does offer a world of nuance, but achieving that sense of awareness - let alone being able to transcribe those thoughts and feelings into the written word - is a skill unto itself. All of this to say that Brett's writing is always worth a look, so go look. Be prepared to spend some time.

I mention Brett not only because he's awesome, but because of a comment he made to me in the inaugural post of his blog. He mentioned that I was "no slouch at the keyboard" myself, which is very nice but patently untrue. In fact, "slouch" is exactly the word I would use to describe the current state of the blog, though I'm sure a thesaurus check would reveal all sorts of accurate adjectives. Perhaps I'll use them later, after another extended bout of slacking. Because I have this space, and because more of our friends are using spaces like this to journal their thoughts and lives, I figure its time to spend a little more energy keeping up with the Joneses.

Upcoming posts: chicken processing, commuting, icebiking, heating systems, chickens (the backyard variety) and more. Not necessarily in that order, but there will be one post per day for the next seven days. We'll see how that strikes me and we'll go from there.