2manybikes

Excellent! I get it !

Touche'

TheKillerPenguin

The balaclava is made by seirus, and the booties are made by c'dale. The booties are pretty much worthless below 40*

FormerBMX'er

Winter commuting, yes! Fast group rides, no!...I overheat. Also no snow, roads are too narrow and Boston drivers suck.

ViperZ

Brothers separated at birth I tell you

2manybikes

bro- I need the Colnago for the weekend. You want the green trike?

ViperZ

Please let Baily come along to keep me company

daredevil

Except you can't blow snow rockets in this and a runny nose is inevitable in cold weather, at least for me.

ViperZ

That's OK, because as your nose is running, it freezes solid enough that you can flick the now frozen runny snot away

Or you could try to blow rockets, and not care how the mask looks to others on the outside

onkey

20's - f**k that. im going for a run/hike

30's - 10-30 mile ride

40's - under 50 mile rides

50's - anything goes!

im thinking about getting those new sidi winter shoes. my feet still get a bit cold but thats about it.

i looked at my schedule last winter and noticed that i did at least one 50mile ride per week which is pretty good.


cheers

daredevil

Believe it or not, on the one ride I made with this, I did go ahead and blow em. Had to. Either that or come to a stop and take care of it and then I'd have been stopping too often. It wasn't pretty but to tell you the truth, I didn't care. It was 5 AM with nobody around.

2manybikes

He likes the idea. He the same thing he said here! .....


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpZ-rQyP1Eo

Weeks

Hm, I'm not sure offhand what brand my booties are, they were a bit of a gift, but they seem to work just awesome, even at temps in the teens

I'll have to czech out that brand of balaclava

TheKillerPenguin

Yes you can. I have the full head version...all you have to do is pull the front down until your nose is exposed.

ViperZ

Awesome, thanks for sharing that! Bailey is a nice best friend

patentcad

I ride in plenty of cold, nasty weather. I don't RECCOMMEND this to others. I just pass along the experience gained in pursuing this stuff in the offchance there might be another weenie out there who shares a similar obsession with not missing a day of riding, weather be damned. I was once like Onkey, you know, <30, F that, I'm going to the gym, <40, I'm only riding 18 miles, etc. Not today.

And riding in the cold can be dangerous (evidenced by that nasty black ice crash I experienced about a year ago in January), but that's part of the learning process too. Ultimately I discovered riding in all these God awful conditions is oddly liberating. Because I used to worry about the approach of winter with respect to riding my bicycle. Not these days. Because I figure I'm going to ride regardless. Actually, it's getting to be a personal challenge: the crappier the weather, the more curious I'm starting to get about riding in it. And most of the time I figure out a way to do it and actually ENJOY it. Not always, but mostly. The best part of that is that it's not nearly as hard as I thought it was going to be. Riding in 20º weather before sunrise? Not something that I would have ever considered at one time. And it turns out to be very cool.

I've discovered cycling is like that. No matter how extreme, tough, adverse, or out there some road ride may seem when you first envision it, in the end it consistently turns out to be very cool. Which is another reason cyclists get more and more addicted to the sport over time. I personally know at least dozen local guys who have been riding 5000+ miles annually since I met them in the late 1980's. These guys are all 45-55 now, when I met them they were 20 years younger. Everybody is still hammering.

At first there was this off season satisfaction of 'this is cool, NOBODY else is riding today'. But the novelty of that fades when you realize that nobody gives a **** about your whacky weather riding besides yourself, and even cyclists think you're friggin crazy for doing it anyway. So I just roll up the mileage regardless. Keeps me happy, keeps me skinnier, helps my riding. But F all that. Keeps me friggin SANE. As sane is anyone that's crazy enough to ride the Big Hamster Wheel can possibly be.

There are many levels of Zen in cycling. They will be revealed to you if you just ride. Even if you only ride in warmer weather. But it might happen faster if you ride in a snow squall or two : ).

daredevil

What kind of tires did you have when you went down? Any advice to help us avoid a similar fate or is it just a roll of the dice?

BTW, love your attitude about winter not being an issue. I'm starting to feel that way too.

patentcad

Winter is always an issue. It partly depends on how you approach it - which is influenced by how badly you want to ride your bike and how flexible your work schedule is. And I certainly do understand that if you work 9-5 riding between November and April can be very difficult much of the time. I used to deal with it by using an indoor trainer and riding on weekends. But that was over 15 years ago. Self employed for all that time and I can generally ride mid day part of the year. in the warmer months I switch to early AM rides. I even ride early AM in the winter when it's warm enough. I'll be on the road @ 6AM tomorrow with lights on my bike.

Tires? I crashed on black ice riding 700 x 23c tires. But that wasn't why I crashed. In this instance the knobby tired MTB, 700 x 28c tires or a motorcycle would have slid out as well. It was simply bad judgement on my part: on a 40º winter morning I saw shiny pavement and thought nothing of it (usually that does NOT mean black ice). But it was super slick and *BOOM* I was down. Moral of that story: if the blacktop is shiny and it's below 50º then DO NOT RIDE OVER IT ON A BIKE (bicycle or motorcycle) if you can possibly avoid it. If you can't then KEEP YOUR FRONT WHEEL STRAIGHT. In my case I feinted slightly left to make a right turn and that subtle move caused the bike to slide out and slam down. It is possible had I just rolled over it in a straight line might have kept the bike upright. But now I'm MUCH more circumspect about pavement surface in colder weather.

I don't believe fatter road tires convey much additional traction on a bicycle for road riding. Knobby MTB tires help because there's a much larger contact patch and more room for error when you start sliding around, and the knobbies seem to confirm needed traction on snowpack or the odd snowy patch. But they're MUCH fatter than any road tire. I ride the MTB whenever the road isn't 99% free of snow and ice, or when the roads are super sloppy from salt/snowmelt.