I can only get warm hands if my body is not enough to sweat a little. So for me, cold hands = another body layer. But I agree with you. Cold hands can be downright painful. It's like "Get out of my way, I'll run over you before I squeeze a brake with these brittle and cold fingers."

No commute today. My turn to take the kids and wife downtown in the minivan.

Another commute lost due to another cold my 4 year old brought home from somewhere. The rest of the week is up in the air at this point.

Cool! I keep getting impressed by your numbers. And to ride at this speed on the streets we have now, you gotta be pretty brave! I am simply afraid to go over 25 km/h at any point, knowing that my brakes can freeze at any time or that I could hit a patch of black ice... Chicken, I know. :)

Wise move. I should take out my "winter bike" for a test spin (I bought it used, fixed it up and have only ridden about 5 km total on it - not enough to have confidence in its mechanical reliability). I'm just so lazy... I think I should take this bike down to a nearby gravel snowy bike path, and if it can be ridden there, it can handle the roads. :)

Morons. I wish I somehow could figure out a way not to get too mad about honks like that. Most people who issue them are probably not even bad people, just ignorant, but hell, they've no excuse to be ignorant, they've got a license, so they're supposed to know stuff about driving and rights of other road users. And given that in winter I wear those weird lobster-claw mitts, I can't even give them the bird! :D

Uh-oh. I was in a similar situation in a car - and it is scarier in a car. I was basically stuck between this backing truck on the driveway in front of me and a busy road behind me. Can't grab the car and duck onto the sidewalk they way you can with a bike... Fortunately a honk did attract the truck driver's attention. (Once again I recommend AirZound - except it doesn't work so well at low temps).

LOL, those are funny. It's even funnier when you're in front of them - as I was on Shaw St. one day (it has lots of speed bumps). The driver just couldn't believe that he could not pass a cyclist! He kept revving up his engine and accelerating - only to brake sharply before a speed bump - and I just kept going. Almost fell off the bike laughing. :D

Considering moving or finding an alternative route?

WOW. With knobbies, on snowy/slushy/icy roads, wearing winter gear???

What gears are you riding when you're doing that pace? What kind of bicycle and terrain?

Cold ride this morning..29 F but very smooth...effortless almost. Last night riding home almost hit by a deer. It ran half way onto the road, then spun on a dime and whizzed out of sight. Fast and agile but not smart. Temp at 36 F as I prepare for ride home.

Where did this occur?
I think it may be time to start complaining to authorities. The drivers in the Alpharetta area are getting worse every day.

Biked in w/ the 5 yr old today, lots of fun.

Coming home last night I made it half the way fine, but then had to stop every 1/4 mile or so to scrape slush out of cassette and derailers. Never really fully satisfactory solution. Was dreading 2" layer of ice this am, but by the time I got on the road, it was mostly back to slush again.

Not a post about riding, but finally I cleaned up my bike, washing off all the slush and salt it has been ridden through the last couple of days, relubing and applying generous amounts of WD-40 here and there. I do keep wondering though what is the point of going to all this trouble of cleaning if the bike will get as dirty almost as soon as I take it out again (relubing I understand, at least)... :D

Ride home was cooler and less sweaty than this morning despite it being slightly warmer (29F vs 19F). The difference was the balaclava. Got passed by a guy riding a white GT frame fixie w/ excellent taste in jackets (had the same jacket I have, but wasn't wearing mine).

I actually went to hose mine off last night, when it was thoroughly slush-encrusted, which I've never ever done before, but the hose was frozen. At least the slush melted off in the garage over night.

well, it's cold but for some reason it really doesn't feel all that cold to me- I hope I don't end up eating my words.

I'm perfectly dressed and layered and my latest glove, mitten, mitten cover combo for the super low temps is working really well.

Was very happy to have the studded snow tires with tons of ice on the bike path today on the ride. Hit one patch on a corner and did a little slide but caught myself and kept right on going.

On the ride home tonight the temperature was 11 F with a light northwest breeze in my face as I rode along the river, which is now getting a little bit of ice along the edges.

cold, windy (pushed me home), uplifting!
passed one other commuter today, #1 in 2.5 month new route. short verbal exchange, he stated "best way to go" . this is a good method to maintain positive mental/physical health. all commuters, keep it up!

snow pretty much all gone today, and what's left is just slush that makes that neat noise as you barrel through it. first ride all the way home in a while. temperatures are back up over freezing, with grey/drizzly skies. i can't find my goretex overmitts (again) so i compromised with double layers of mismatched gloves and was fine since it never actually rained. this winter i've discovered i'm so much happier about every part of the ride home when my face isn't cold. lost my balaclava in mec a month ago when i went to get the studded tires, so the new compromise is a sort of lone-ranger look, with a bandana looped through the helmet straps and pulled up over my nose when i want my face covered. mcgyver r me.

the ride home had a steady but mild headwind the whole way and a bit more rain. i didn't have nearly the energy i'd expected to have after eating more or less properly thoughout the day for a change, so my pride kind of hopes i'll discover my tires are too soft. today was a day spent dreaming about when i can put my slicks back.

Today's ride featured the legendary wintery mix of sleet and rain. Actually it's kind of nice to ride in weather that you don't see very often. Now if we could just get some snow.

Low teens and a howling headwind. (Wind chill near zero F without me riding into it.) :p

The MUP was mostly lousy. The northernmost quarter mile I had to walk because it was too thick and rough. Then another 2 miles were packed by peds but that means it was also rough. At least I could ride on it, slowly. Amazingly enough, the "demonstration plowing project", funded by a local bicycle advocacy group, has been started. The last 3 or so miles of the MUP were plowed. Not clear, but smooth, at least. That's all I ask. I saw lots of bicycle tracks on the plowed part.

I think I'll avoid the unplowed MUP as much as I can and take parallel roads for the ride home.

32F, warmest it's been all week. Nice 25minute ride in.
riding with a hangover kinda sucks. But i deserved it, i was a bit intemperent with the whisky sours....
Disregarded the presence of a cop at a red-light intersection (no traffic), & went through it. Cop didn't mind.

That's a good way to say it. It definitely wasn't boring. Everyone was driving very cautiously. One guy who was turning left flashed his lights at me so I waved and he gave me a two-hands-up shrug. I couldn't tell what he was trying to say and it was cold so I just kept on moving.

It's nice to say that I rode in on the worst day of the year so far.

Can say the same here. Cold rain and a little sleet mixed in. Ice on road signs, but nothing on the ground. Overall...fun ride in.

Cold this morning, about 25 degrees when I left at 5:50. It was a 4-layer morning with: undershirt, long sleeve riding jersey, fleece vest, and shell. In addition, I wore my wool socks, long pants, and broke out the balaclava for the first time this year. Fortunately there was no headwind like yesterday and breathing the warm air through the bala kept my throat from hurting and staying irritated through the day as it did yesterday. Otherwise, I made good time and legs felt terrific (I was able to find just the right gear to spin in for 90% of the ride). This afternoon should be interesting with the possibility of rain/sleet/snow-we'll see.

Fast (for me) ride in b/c queerpunk caught up w/ me and we rode down together. We rode side by side talking and keeping up w/ traffic and before I knew it I was at work. He caught up to me so early I didn't have a chance to zip up my jacket or put on gloves and it was 30F. Somehow, my hands didn't feel cold. Must've been the extra exertion to keep up w/ him. That kid's quick and I know he was going slow for me. Thanks mattio!

The ride to work was lovely, I made some adjustments to my 3-speed hub and it shifted great, no slipping out of gear, no clumsy shifts. Until the really hard hill to the parking lot of work, then something slipped and the little chain pulled out of the hub. I spent some time at work trying to fix it, but with no real tools it was essentially a no go. So I rode home in the highest gear imaginable. If I ever want to grow huge thighs/balls I will ride in that gear all the time.

A couple degrees below freezing, jacket opened slightly.... lovely ride in. The slop is mostly picked up/disintegrated.

Yeah, I've moved temporarily to Bloor/Ossington area, so my ride in is very short. I'm actually moving a little more west on Roncesvalles - so once settled in there, I'll be able to make use of High Park in part of my rides.

Spadina Av. is a pretty big artery, so most of the snow/slush/ice was only on the sides of the road, the road surface was basically clear, so it was plain sailing.

I ride a Dyno Victory (XMart cheap MTB) with what I would guess is pretty standard 21-speed MTB gearing (I think my 7th cog is a 12, no idea on my FD size sorry). The sprint I did at that speed wasn't for long, maybe a mile at most (Spadina/Harbord -> Spadina/Richmond).

Last night I had just started out from work and cranked it up on Adelaide toward Spadina (to head back north) and lept it into 7th, the chain jumped and got jammed between the cassette and frame, joy. Easy enough to fix, but got me worried for a second it was more serious.

Good ride upto my class last night, only my U-lock (OnGuard) fell out of it's mount and half the bottom plastic casing broke off, which I collected from the road along with the lock. I'll have to ask them re: warranty on that one. The lock fell off AGAIN this morning on Harbord, which leads me to think that the locking mechanism that holds it in the mount is broken. Not a big deal to keep it in the backpack, but still, not ideal.

I learned that knobbies don't cut through the snow/crap on the ground any better than my road tyres do, as I was getting some drifting/tracking going on, though I'm sure they grip much better generally. I'm not swapping back to test that, though ;)

I raced an artic (semi) this morning from College/Spadina south to at least Dundas or Queen, he was in the centre-most lane, I was behind some right turning cars on the right. Realizing there was a lot of traffic both behind the truck and behind me, I let it rip to allow them to skip around the slower accelerating truck. Managed to hit 24mph (38km/h I think) for sure (didn't see a 25, but it might've got there), which beat me up pretty good (sprints were never my thing :p) for a casual coast into work from Richmond/Spadina down to Camden, across to Brant and south to King.

At least I beat the semi.. :D

Seems around 13 minutes is my current commute, so I'm in that weird "just getting warmed up and into it" stage by the time I get to work, so the sprints I try to do just for the work. I like to ride as fast as I can in order to keep up with traffic, as I believe it's way less of a danger with the lower speed differential. My schedule right now doesn't allow for much alternation of that short trip (2.5 mi or so), but tonight I get to do a bit more - I'm going back upto where I used to live - that might suck on knobbies, going up Sherbourne :p

knobbies aren't designed to cut through anything.... shovel, grip at, and generally push against...yes
In traffic carry your lock either on hip(messer style), or in your bag , having it bounce under you can be dangerous. No streets in Toronto suck with knobbies....maintain your air pressure. Let a little out if it's storming snow and you'll be riding ON the snow with more knobbie contact to prevent slipping..

No new snow overnight, but things were considerably colder. I got to work okay, but there was a woman in the vacant office across from me! I've been using that office as a change room for the last month or so, but I had to go change in the bathroom instead. Oh well...

Stall changing is an art form...
pinkrobe I think you have too many bikes, as a public service...you know the rest..

an '06 Fabian? Is that what I think it is? :lol:

Boring this week. Same weather every day. 10F in the morning and 25 to 30F on the way home. Took the road bike today for a change. It's about 16lbs lighter, but strangely enough I didn't arrive any faster.

The air is more dense when cold, requiring more effort to ride.

Whew, slush mostly gone, back to benign mist/fog. Flat going home last night (rear), flat coming in this morning (front). At least this morning's was at home, so I took the opportunity to change the rim tape (11mm to 17mm, though it's true the 11mm was still rock-solid; I wonder why my rear rim takes in so much water and the matching front does not?)