The Winter Doldrums...
 

It's snowing, it's cold enough that my light gloves are heavy enough and my heavy gloves are too heavy. The wind is blowing which chills my face. This place sucks to ride a bike in. It's starting to get really hard to get the motivation to get on the bike and ride. Coupled with the fact that I have no other way to get to school, I'm in the middle of the winter doldrums.

Suggestions would be helpful on how to survive the middle of winter mindset.... :D

I'm really feeling the winter doldrums too though fortunately this winter snow has been a relative rarity here. But I'm getting tired of the cold. Getting grumpy enough to not want to ride but then I considered alternatives and decided I didn't like them either, except maybe just stay home and hibernate (not an option sadly :) )

Here are two ideas:
- switch up your route for variety. Take a longer route home to go by a good coffee shop / pastry place / whatever suits your fancy.
- treat yourself to some nice new merino wool to keep you extra warm
- make yourself some good soup (enough for a week) and know you can have some hot soup at the end of your ride (whether you bring it in a thermos to school or warm it up when you get home)

Cutting a fresh path through 2 inches of fresh powder this morning was enough to recharge me for another month or so of winter riding.

We have too much snow, the roads are craptastic and the body isn't cooperating as you really need 2 good legs and a better back than I do to slog through some of this crap.

But I am still riding.

Pass the painkilers.

It's all downhill from here, Solstice has passed us by, the days are getting longer. Before you know it'll be spring. Vitamin D, full spectrum light bulbs, see if you can find a full spectrum tanning bed somewhere.
I'm in Toronto too and I'm upset I've had no snow at all to speak of to test my new tires this year.

I'm in Detroit and we haven't had squat for snow. I think it's a double edged sword. It would be fun to blast through some nice white stuff but after days of it, it would wear me out pretty quickly...

You have no snow ?

Suck it up and ride.

I'd be unhappy without snow too. There's little upside to a winter without snow other than easier riding.

Some of the most fun riding I've done is in cold temps with a nice 5 inch layer and fresh snow falling. This is just cold, wet, windy and gray.

With February now, I leave the office a few minutes before sunset - which makes a big difference for me. Sometimes I can do 1/2 of my ride home before it gets really dark. Funny that the OP is from Michigan, I always envy Michigan for being still on EST. Here (on the wrong side of the lake, as I like to put it) we have CST which means it gets darker earlier than in MI.

I have a calender counting down the days until March. I know that somewhere in March lies a beautiful day. Well....that and the new bike I ordered that I should be getting in March. That helps.

March should be nice and April will probably be better but I don't think that they will lift my spirits as much as May will.

:)

Yay it snowed yesterday. That seemed to perk things up and make them more interesting.

Watch the road to paris on youtube. That should be inspiring enough :)

I'm having the in-between problems too. I either overdress or underdress. Haven't found a happy middle ground yet.

I'm lucky in the fact that our local ski hills get all the snow, and what does fall in the City valley melts off within a day or so. Commuting yesterday in 31F temps and dry roads was pretty nice, nevermind my cheap snowboarding gear, thrift shop designer lamb's wool sweater (Well I guess its fancy, I bought it for $2.50 with riding in mind). The helmet + ski goggles + face mask had to make me look silly, but I was warm and sweaty. :) I'm just glad I can shower when I get here!

Seems a bit much in the head/face cover dept. for the freezing mark. It'll be about -15C/5F before I'll even consider the face mask/goggles. A pair of cool/cold weather tights over/under shorts are enough. BUT to each their own.

date a new or (extra) person. then the little things won't bother you anymore

The goggles are more because I don't have a set of clear sunglasses, and its not yet light enough in the morning to wear the pair I have. - I took the facemask off half way also.

I'm living from paycheck to paycheck, and the gods haven't blessed me with a good pair of cold-weather cycling tights yet. Been making due with a set of thermal long johns and pants of one sort or another over my padded shorts. At the moment their isn't money in the system for proper cycling wear, but I shower at work and have plenty of water to drink so I don't mind arriving hot and sweaty. Need spring to hit so I can flip some bikes!

Oh I hear you about the $$$$ after all these years of riding I finally got some nice tights for myself. I've hit the hardwear/workwear stores for inexpensive mid weight construction gloves, even clear safety glasses are a fraction of riding goggles. You can score some interesting active wear from the Goodwills and such sometimes. I got a nice, albeit older, gortex jacket for life 5 bucks. I find cycling specific stuff to, generally, hella expensive for no other reason than it can be.

Granted, Texas isn't Michigan, but....

I'm having a tough time getting motivated as well. My new commute is 17 miles each way, 10 miles longer than it used to be, and with the coldish days (40s and gray a lot this week), it's tough to get motivated, knowing that I start in darkness and end in darkness and with the cloudiness I don't even get to see sunrises or sunsets. Also, I picked up a pretty good head cold this week.

I've had to realize that I can't ride every day without it taking a toll on me. I hope once things warm up the ride will get easier and my endurance will improve. (Endurance isn't the right word... it's just that, on the days I commute I'm spending 10% of the day in the saddle.) I'm just trying to keep the thread going by riding at least once a week in the hope that things will get better eventually.

That dark at both ends of the day, I think, had got to be one of the hardest things on the mind/body.

I've enjoyed the dark. kinda bummed that it's getting light before I get to work and if I leave at 4 and get home by 5 then I'm riding in full yet darkening daylight.

Well, the days are definitely getting longer. You got that going for you.

Oh man... so, I'm riding back in the fresh snow (:D) and I'm taking the lane. A cop that has already spoken to me about this is sitting at an intersection and I'm thinking, "oh crap" but I keep pedaling. He drives past me and then hits the brakes and... nothing. I keep riding. Up ahead the 4 lanes turn into 2 and they are narrow. I take the lane and there's a guy behind me. It's uphill so I'm cranking kinda slowly up it. I make my turn onto a side path and the guy behind me starts speeding up. Then he pulls over because the cop was behind him and busted him for something! It was a pretty fun ride home. :)

I'm not riding through winter. Got a nice bike and don't want the salt & crud to get at it. Can't wait until March, that's when I can start getting out. In the meantime I do allot of walking and use the trainer in the basement, I've also started using the Wii fit thingy and I find it really does help, kills time and it's got some great yoga workouts that stretch me out.. :)

Last week it got up to the low 40's and i'm thinking yeah, spring creeping up sooner. This week mid 20's, grey, and snow off and on. I keep checking the forecast but it seems to be the same for the next week. Oh well, i'll keep riding anyway, such is the life of a commuter.

I'm with you. I rode until late December, when the snow arrived here, and they started salting the roads. I've been looking for a winter beater, but there doesn't seem to be much here on Kijiji or CL. Not going to wreck my only decent bike for the sake of a couple months of cold, windy, dark commutes...

Speaking of salt - we took our bikes on an impromptu vacation down to Florida last February. (Reduced work week due to economy - decided to re-arrange the unpaid time off, an bundle it with 'Family Day', and make a 10 day escape! :) Threw all our ultralight camping gear in the back of the Civic and we were GONE!) We only rode our bikes maybe 100 km while we were down there, but they were completely rusted out when we got back, as a result of the salt being put on the highways in Ohio, Michigan and Ontario on the drive back up. (There was a blizzard coming through Michigan - we lost count of the number of pickup trucks and SUV's in the ditch! :lol: No bad accidents though - just a bunch of test pilots that forgot to SLOW DOWN).

Sorry for getting off track... Main point was that without a winter beater, I'm a pedestrian/bus commuter until spring. Took up running for the winter season, as I can get the salt off my shoes easier than my bike. :-)

So for those of you with winter bikes and the cajones to handle the weather - good for you! Hang in there! :thumb: For the rest of us, COME ON SPRING!!! :)

Brawny

I've been unable (or unwilling) to ride all week due to a snow/sleet storm we had in NC last weekend. It finally warmed up some yesterday with lots of sunshine, but there is still a lot of melting snow and ice on the road edges. Thought I might ride this morning, but when I got up at 5:30 am the temperature was hovering at 32 F, and it always drops a few degrees during my commute from 6:30-7:15 am. So I decided not to risk the hazard of hitting black ice, and drove. As much as I wanted to ride, it was a good call. There were a lot of icy patches in spots during my drive to work, and according to the radio reports some bad accidents due to people skidding on black ice.

Anyway, that will probably be our only snow this winter, so I can wait it out. We rarely get more than one snowstorm in a winter, and sometimes go years with none at all.

The temp right now is 14 F. I'm hoping it warms up to at least 20 by the time I need to leave, in 1.5 hours but I really doubt it will. Oh well. On the plus side, turns out the Jeep that got pulled over yesterday was for something serious. When my gf drove past it last night, about a half hour later, two cop cars were sitting there and no one was in the Jeep. I think I might have held up the cop and Jeep just long enough for the cops to run the plates. :lol: