Keep your hands warm and dry
 

Tired of getting cold wet hands when you bike in the rain? Tired of having water run into the sleeves of your raingear and pool up around your elbows? You can keep your hands and arms warm and dry even in cold nasty rainy weather by wearing rubber gloves lined with knit polyprophelene glove liners.

Wait! Before you mumble "this guy is nuts" and click out of this posting, let me explain. I know something about keeping my hands warm and dry in cold wet conditions. I live in Montana, and I'm also a whitewater kayaker. I kayak all year long, even when it's snowing and there is ice floating in the water. Attached to this post are pictures of us launching our kayaks in four feet of snow at the beginning of a 116-mile four-day unsupported kayak trip on Marsh Creek and the Middle Fork of the Salmon in Idaho, and another picture of one of us paddling in a snowstorm past a big block of snow at the bottom of an avalanche gulch. We paddled through continuous snow for most of the first day, and a lot of intermittent snow for much of the second day. I do that kind of thing all the time.

How do I keep my hands warm while kayaking? For many years I've used OS Systems dry gloves for cold weather paddling. These are heavy neophrene gloves with a tight gasket at the wrist which keeps water out. I wear knit polyprophelene glove liners under the dry gloves. This equipment keeps my hands warm and toasty while kayaking, even in extreme conditions.

I've adapted my kayaking system for biking. On a recumbent bicycle with over seat steering, your elbows are below your handlebars. As a result, rain tends to run inside the sleeves of your rain gear, soak your sleeves, and pool up around your elbows, even if you tighten up the velcro on the wrists of your rain gear. Not very nice. You don't need a waterproof seal around your wrist like you do when kayaking; you just need to keep the rain out of your sleeves. So put on a pair of rubber dishwashing gloves, or the somewhat heavier rubber gloves which you can buy for a couple of bucks at a hardware store, and pull them over the cuffs of your raingear. That keeps the rain out of your sleeves, but rubber gloves aren't very warm, and they can feel clammy with only a little condensation inside. So wear a pair of thin knit polyprophelene or acrylic glove liners under the rubber gloves. Now your hands will stay warm and dry. Even when you're pedalling hard, your hands don't sweat very much, and the liners will keep you from noticing any minor condensation.

I buy rubber gloves which are quite large, so there's room for glove liners underneath them, so air can circulate up inside them, so they will be easier to take on and off, and so you don't have to work to bend your fingers around your handlebars. Absolutely do not buy rubber gloves with a knit cotton lining. If the cotton gets wet it will conduct heat away rapidly, your hands will get very cold, and the cotton will take a long time to dry out. For liners, knit glove liners are thinner and more comfortable than sewn gloves, because they don't have any seams. Get liners made out of polyprophelene, acrylic, or some other material which doesn't absorb water and which drys out quickly. Home Depot and similar hardware stores usually stock white knit gloves made of some mystery acrylic which work great, and only cost a couple of bucks. I like to be visible when biking in the rain, so I got orange rubber gloves which match my orange rain parka. You may choose to make a different fashion statement.

As long as you keep your hands on your handlebars, your hands will stay warm and dry. However, if you stand up and let your hands hang by your sides, rain can run down the arms of your rain gear and into the gloves. So when you stand up, either keep your arms crossed, or pull off the gloves and drape them over your handlebars until you're ready to hit the road again.

This system works great in pouring rain and nasty cold windy weather. It's overkill in more mild weather.

A negative aspect of biking in rubber gloves is that the geek quotient is pretty high. But you can shrug that off if your hands are warm and dry!

thanks for the post-- cold hands seem to be my biggest problem--

train safe-

Thank you, pmmpete, for sharing.

Looks like a workable idea for cold rain. Or, I can stay inside!

Sounds like a good system. I try not to ride in the rain, but have been looking at the gauntlet winter gloves from Duluth Trading Post.

Where do you find rubber gloves that are quite large? Most that I find will barely get over my hands.

Artkansas - If you are having trouble finding gloves that are large enough, go to a couple of your local hardware stores or building supply stores and ask for rubber gloves for painting, doing tile work, handling chemicals, and similar activities. These kinds of gloves tend to come in a single size which is fairly large, and different manufacturers make their gloves different sizes. Hopefully you can find a pair of gloves which is big enough to permit some ventilation even when you're wearing thin glove liners, and in a color which you don't consider too embarassing. If you can't find any gloves which are sufficiently large in those kinds of stores, check out the dishwashing gloves at your grocery store. Dishwashing gloves usually come in small, medium, large, and extra large, and with some brands the extra large is quite large.

A disadvantage of dish washing gloves is that they are usually yellow, which probably makes those you pass think "hey, that dude looks like he's wearing dishwashing gloves." That could offset the positive impression which your classy bike makes. I've had a lot of kids shout at me, "Hey, mister, cool bike!" I've never had anybody shout at me "Hey, mister, cool gloves!" Although while pedalling in the rain in Austria this fall, I passed a family from Holland, and all the kids started giggling. I hope they were giggling about my rubber gloves, and not about me in general.

"...or I can stay inside"... Friggin' weenie! Suck it up and ride! :troll:

SP
Bend, OR

sporting good stores also sell rubber type gloves. I got some for using my electrical chain saw. the rubber serves as an electrical insulator

I just wear latex/nitrile gloves under my regular winter gloves. Even the sweat from my hands doesn't get to the inside of my regular winter gloves.

I haven't found X-Large dishwashing gloves that I can get on my hands. I figured the sizing was for women.