PsySal
11-28-06, 08:07 PM
Perhaps this is silly, I haven't been hanging around this forum actually but the past two days have been really... hardcore... So I thought I would post!
I work two days a week at a meat pie factory, the rest of the week I'm working on this (PLUG! http://www.venturethevoid.com). Anyhow, the shop moved and I have a longer commute than I did before. I don't have a bike computer but I'm going to estimate that it's about 20 km each way. And this would probably be fine in summer when I can ride my road bike...
The past two days have been -25'C or so, with a "wind chill" of -40'C. Well, I think wind chill is sort of a mut point when you are riding your bike, you'd experience more or less constant wind chill, but there has also been a lot of snow.
The night before work I lay out the clothes that I will need next to the furnace to keep them warm. Right now I'm partially properly equipped: I have extremely high quality mittens (which have never failed me!), a great ballaclava, jacket which seems about right for this weather, long underwear, my work pants, and shell pants for fending off the wind. I wear my backpack to work and have a hi-vis vest over it. Today I was able to score some goggles which are clear enough to use for about half my commute. My eyes don't really get cold although I get ice crystals on my eyebrows, my ballaclava and my breath seems to keep that part of my face warm. For shoes, I have two pairs of socks, plastic bags over them, and them a loose-fitting shoe. My feet stay acceptably warm for most of the ride but usually the last 15 minutes or so they are too cold. Anyhow, that's my gear! Oh, and I ride an upgraded NORCO Mountaineer, which is a cheap MTB that is less-cheap. I don't use studded tires though I sometimes fall. I have fenders!
My ride starts out downhill which always feels nice, and then there are some back streets, then I arrive at a river pathway a few km to the west of downtown Calgary. The river has some cool steam-like effects and when I leave it is normally dark so sunrise can be nice. I'm not the only cycle-commuter, I see others on my ride as well. I am somewhat frequently passed, which in summertime would have been unacceptable (hehehe, you know the feeling) but in the winter somehow my survival instinct is like, overriding my hunting instinct. Maybe if I was hungrier I'd feel like chasing them more, who knows :-)
I ride the river pathway for a long time, the middle section of it is cleared by city crews which is nice. The end of it goes through sort of a homeless village, hard to describe but a cyclist was mugged there this year. I hope they don't figure out that my mittens are worth $80. Actually it's quite sad, our homeless population has exploded in the past few years and in this past week I think 3 or 4 people have frozen to death. This is not normal for our city, we have emergency shelters to at least keep people warm.
Anyhow, after that is where it gets interesting. I go through a neighbourhood called Inglewood which is sort of a trendy locale. Normally I am a vehicular cyclist but I have just fallen too many times to ride on roads that are moderately busy. So I ride on sidewalks for this portion of my ride. By the time I have reached Inglewood I have crossed downtown completely and am on the east side.
From inglewood, I can meet back up with the bike path, but here it's not actually cleared of snow. Monday morning I took this and it was brutal. I think I spent about 20 minutes to go 1 km. Really really hard to pedal through that crap. So the other day I found a shortcut. Basically, I cut through a service road that runs through a rail yard where they load/unload trains and so forth. I think my hi-vis vest serves as camoflage here because the rail workers all wear them. I am trespassing, it's a private road, but I really have no reasonable alternative to get to work. This morning, as I was riding, the rail workers were out blowing snow off the tracks. At that point, I have the ski goggles down because they are totally frosted over, my feet are plain cold, I have been riding for over an hour in -25'C weather basically halfway across my city which is geographically very large. So I'm feeling very well, it's not the most fun bike ride I've done.
Anyhow, the rail workers cheered me on! It was great. I did a fist pump in the air and they clapped and shouted! Really I'm not making this crap up...
I'm not sure, but I think they have a coworker who may ride his bike because I saw one leaned up against a building on the way home. So maybe they thought I was him. If so, that's great, even more cover.
Anyhow, crossing the rail yard is fun, not too scary as there are only a few cars but it's cool to see all the locomotives up close moving around and so forth. I cross a few tracks but I'm always super careful. I don't think they actually very often have trains running across them anyhow, as the service road has to cross them.
From there it's just a little ways to work and I'm baking meat pies for the population of Calgary! Then after 8 hours of that I have to do it all over again.
Sometimes, it just feels good to be a little bit hard core.
I work two days a week at a meat pie factory, the rest of the week I'm working on this (PLUG! http://www.venturethevoid.com). Anyhow, the shop moved and I have a longer commute than I did before. I don't have a bike computer but I'm going to estimate that it's about 20 km each way. And this would probably be fine in summer when I can ride my road bike...
The past two days have been -25'C or so, with a "wind chill" of -40'C. Well, I think wind chill is sort of a mut point when you are riding your bike, you'd experience more or less constant wind chill, but there has also been a lot of snow.
The night before work I lay out the clothes that I will need next to the furnace to keep them warm. Right now I'm partially properly equipped: I have extremely high quality mittens (which have never failed me!), a great ballaclava, jacket which seems about right for this weather, long underwear, my work pants, and shell pants for fending off the wind. I wear my backpack to work and have a hi-vis vest over it. Today I was able to score some goggles which are clear enough to use for about half my commute. My eyes don't really get cold although I get ice crystals on my eyebrows, my ballaclava and my breath seems to keep that part of my face warm. For shoes, I have two pairs of socks, plastic bags over them, and them a loose-fitting shoe. My feet stay acceptably warm for most of the ride but usually the last 15 minutes or so they are too cold. Anyhow, that's my gear! Oh, and I ride an upgraded NORCO Mountaineer, which is a cheap MTB that is less-cheap. I don't use studded tires though I sometimes fall. I have fenders!
My ride starts out downhill which always feels nice, and then there are some back streets, then I arrive at a river pathway a few km to the west of downtown Calgary. The river has some cool steam-like effects and when I leave it is normally dark so sunrise can be nice. I'm not the only cycle-commuter, I see others on my ride as well. I am somewhat frequently passed, which in summertime would have been unacceptable (hehehe, you know the feeling) but in the winter somehow my survival instinct is like, overriding my hunting instinct. Maybe if I was hungrier I'd feel like chasing them more, who knows :-)
I ride the river pathway for a long time, the middle section of it is cleared by city crews which is nice. The end of it goes through sort of a homeless village, hard to describe but a cyclist was mugged there this year. I hope they don't figure out that my mittens are worth $80. Actually it's quite sad, our homeless population has exploded in the past few years and in this past week I think 3 or 4 people have frozen to death. This is not normal for our city, we have emergency shelters to at least keep people warm.
Anyhow, after that is where it gets interesting. I go through a neighbourhood called Inglewood which is sort of a trendy locale. Normally I am a vehicular cyclist but I have just fallen too many times to ride on roads that are moderately busy. So I ride on sidewalks for this portion of my ride. By the time I have reached Inglewood I have crossed downtown completely and am on the east side.
From inglewood, I can meet back up with the bike path, but here it's not actually cleared of snow. Monday morning I took this and it was brutal. I think I spent about 20 minutes to go 1 km. Really really hard to pedal through that crap. So the other day I found a shortcut. Basically, I cut through a service road that runs through a rail yard where they load/unload trains and so forth. I think my hi-vis vest serves as camoflage here because the rail workers all wear them. I am trespassing, it's a private road, but I really have no reasonable alternative to get to work. This morning, as I was riding, the rail workers were out blowing snow off the tracks. At that point, I have the ski goggles down because they are totally frosted over, my feet are plain cold, I have been riding for over an hour in -25'C weather basically halfway across my city which is geographically very large. So I'm feeling very well, it's not the most fun bike ride I've done.
Anyhow, the rail workers cheered me on! It was great. I did a fist pump in the air and they clapped and shouted! Really I'm not making this crap up...
I'm not sure, but I think they have a coworker who may ride his bike because I saw one leaned up against a building on the way home. So maybe they thought I was him. If so, that's great, even more cover.
Anyhow, crossing the rail yard is fun, not too scary as there are only a few cars but it's cool to see all the locomotives up close moving around and so forth. I cross a few tracks but I'm always super careful. I don't think they actually very often have trains running across them anyhow, as the service road has to cross them.
From there it's just a little ways to work and I'm baking meat pies for the population of Calgary! Then after 8 hours of that I have to do it all over again.
Sometimes, it just feels good to be a little bit hard core.