When I went to bed last night the weather report was saying it would be -12F this morning. My wife gets really nervous if I ride too far below 0, so I told her I would drive this morning. As a bonus, that meant I didn't have to get up as early. However when I woke up, the temps had bottomed out in the middle of the night and had already risen to -1F. I made a last second decision to go ahead and ride, so I threw on my gear and headed out.
Because I was trying to get out of the door quickly I decided to leave my work clothes on (I was already dressed) rather than change into bike specific clothes. I threw a pair of sweat pants on over my work pants, and my windbreaker over my shirt. I was hoping the cold would reduce the amount of sweat and allow me to get away with not wearing separate riding clothes. It probably would have worked had I been going to the client's office (4 miles) but because of MLK day the client's office was closed, so I had to ride to our company's office (8 miles.) When I arrived I was a sweaty mess and didn't have anything dry to change into. Oops.
The big story of the morning though, was about 1.5 miles from the office I hit some black ice in an intersection and went down hard. It was an almost imperceptible layer on top of the pavement. Even though I was running my studded tires I found myself on the ground before I even knew what had happened. Because I was in an intersection on a pretty busy road I popped right back up, grabbed my bike and ran over to the sidewalk before I stopped to assess the situation.
No damage to the bike. I came down on my left side. My left hip and forearm took the brunt of the impact, but didn't seem too bad. I got back on the bike and resumed the ride to work. At first my hip hurt worse than my arm, but by the time I arrived my hip was doing OK but my arm was on fire. After removing my jacket and rolling up my shirt sleeve I discovered a small patch of road rash on my forearm. No tears in my jacket or shirt so it's weird how that happened. Bandaged it up. It's stinging pretty good but I'll live. Probably feel the hip more tomorrow. Was more embarrassed than anything else. I'm sure the motorists who saw me go down were thinking, "See! That's why you don't ride a bicycle in the winter!"
I've been noticing lately that my studded tires are starting to slide a bit on ice. I'm wondering if they're starting to wear out. This is the 6th season I've ridden this pair. Probably have about 1500 miles on them. There's plenty of tread left on the tires and the carbide studs are still sticking up proud of the rubber, but they just don't seem to be biting into the ice like they used to. Might have to suck it up and buy a new pair after this season.
On the up-side, I got to see a guy on skis being pulled by his dog. Wouldn't have seen that if I'd driven.