View Single Post
Old 01-30-08, 11:20 AM
  #8  
andrelam
Senior Member
 
Join Date: May 2007
Location: Buffalo NY
Posts: 1,035

Bikes: Gerry Fisher Nirvana, LeMond Buenos Aires

Mentioned: 0 Post(s)
Tagged: 0 Thread(s)
Quoted: 0 Post(s)
Likes: 0
Liked 0 Times in 0 Posts
You look like you will be fine with the clothing. Remember that you want to be cool when you get on your bike. If you are already hot just standing still, you will be over-heating in no time once you get moving. I don't wear much more than what you mentioned and am comfortable to at least 8F (haven't had any colder weather to test in).

How is your bike prepped. You don't need a lot, but Fenders are an absolute must for riding in anything other than perfect weather conditions. I personally don't care to have a line of muddy water streaming up my back if there is any precipitation. Besides keeping you much cleaner, the most important aspect of the fenders is that is keeps your drive train much cleaner. My chain used to get gritty just from riding on dry roads, now with fenders, my chains stays pretty clean even with rain.

What kind of climate are you riding in? You may not get much if any snow, but icy conditions can happen just about everywhere in this country, and riding on ice is definitely not fun. I have zero desire to hit the pavement. For added protection from the ice, studded tires are realy your only option. I have both an Innova (steel studded tire $25), and a Nokia W106 (Cabite steel studds $50) both 700Cx35 and both will work fine. Both definitely will slow you down a bit, but when you hit some inexepected slick stuff, they can definitely save you from some bodily harm. I've been riding almost non stop since April 1st. LASt week we had snowy precipitation all 5 days of commuting and we had a minimum of 15 MPH wind, with most days hovering around 20 to 25 MPH. Riding on slicks would have been suicidal. Today we have winds up to 81 MPH so no riding I am lucky my work building even has power as the winds have knocked power out all over the place.

One of the biggest bennefits I've experienced with my winter riding is that I have not been affected much by the lack of sun light. As far as I know I do not suffer from SAD (Depression caused by reduced sun light), but I work in an inside office and don't get to see daylight during the day. Now that I get to see at least 30 minutes of daylight as I commute to work around 7:45 am I think my body is getting a nice "jolt" of daylight in the morning plus a nice workout to get it moving. The evenings until recently were dark, but now that we are about 40 days past the Winter Solstice I now have some level of daylkght till about 5:30PM.

Happy riding and enjoy getting out there during the winter,
André
andrelam is offline