caloso

I've never had to buy a new outfit, but I have run over to Macy's and bought underwear and a belt on different occasions.

noglider 

I have a pair of dress trousers at work. One day I rode to work and had forgotten I had brought those pants home so I went around work pantsless. It was like a dream!

liampboyle

I would love one, as long as someone else is buying

asmac

Not really random. As you note, 100 is a very high temp an 0 very low. In fact, it's based on the highest and lowest normal European temps and very useful as a human temperature scale. Who really cares where water boils or freezes and, in any event, those actual number depends on many factors such as air pressure and dissolved minerals. And you can't divide or multiply temps so the "metric" thing is mostly irrelevant.

wphamilton

According to my brief research, F thought that 100 was the highest we could stand without suffering heat stroke

I was just needling acidfast7 about the "metric logic" of the Fahrenheit scale. But keep talking like that and you'll wind up using slugs and BTU and other weird units. As opposed to the simple clarity of needing 1 calorie to raise the temperature of 1 cubic centimeter of water (which weighs 1 gram) by 1 degree.

Darth Lefty 

The problem with a calorie is that it's got no relation to a joule.

The kilogram is the only unit left with a physical reference. Look into it if you're interested in this sort of thing, Wired did a story a few years ago

Phil_gretz

...I cannot grasp the ounce. Especially in cooking, where the unit is used for both mass and volume. In the kitchen with my wife, and she barks, "quick, bring me 4 ounces of mushrooms" I know that these must be a checked with the scale. Okay.


But if she says, "bring me 8 ounces of dry rice"...uh, oh. "Um, Honey, would you like 3/4 of a cup of rice? Or should I weigh out what you need?" She looks at me like I'm brain dead.


Why is this?


Oh, and I have special clothing that I use for my bike commuting. Not all was designed for bicyclists, but each piece is chosen to do its specific job. I do not wear my bicycling clothing when I work. Neither do I wear my commuting clothes when I'm not on the bike, but only when I ride. This keeps things simpler. And, I have the benefit of wearing exactly what works for the planned ride and its weather conditions. But it's taken me decades to accumulate each piece, things like arm warmers, wool socks, windproof mittens, nylon/spandex headbands, a proper fitting rain jacket, a correct base layer - these all have taken years of trial and error to get just right.


Could street clothes do as good of a job for me? I'd be really astonished if that were the case...but, that's just me.

Robert C

I have done similar, I had to do some work on Portland OR, I was out of Sacramento CA. As I arrived in Portland I suddenly realized that I had all my work related equipment; but no clothing except what I was wearing. Stupid things happen

As far as commuting goes, I just wear my work clothing on my commute; but then, it is just a couple of miles. On the way to work I use the "e" in e-bike a bit more than I do going home. . . yes, I know, an e-bike . . . some here will say that I should drive instead; however, I choose not to.

HardyWeinberg

The meter is 1/10,000,000 of the distance from the north pole to the equator through Paris, minus 0.2mm; I know it's been redefined in relation to the speed of light but the official reference meter of platinum alloy has not been changed.

edit: that 0.2mm jams another 2 km into the distance from equator to north pole so is a nontrivial change to the definition...

alan s 

But then you're not really riding a bike.

I-Like-To-Bike

So?

alan s 

So, get a car, ride the bus, take the subway, take Uber, etc. Lots of great alternatives that don't involve much sweating.

asmac

Needling is good and I am thrilled to know exactly how many calories I need to buy the next time I warm up my 250cc cup of coffee. Helpful!

mcours2006

Must be Snarky Thursday today.

asmac

Now it's rolled around to snarky Sunday. I was driven by curiosity to learn a bit more about calories and discovered that it is not actually an official metric measurement. That's the joule. Here's a bit of what Wikipedia has to say:

"Although these units (i.e. calories) relate to the metric system, all of them have been considered obsolete in science since the adoption of the SI system.[3] The unit of energy in the International System of Units is the joule. One small calorie is approximately 4.2 joules (so one large calorie is about 4.2 kilojoules). The factor used to convert calories to joules at a given temperature is numerically equivalent to the specific heat capacity of water expressed in joules per kelvin per gram or per kilogram. The precise conversion factor depends on the definition adopted."

I don't remember why we were talking about this and don't expect that anyone cares but am driven to share my enlightenment.

SylvainG

Same here, I like to ride fast, push myself. According to Garmin Insight, all age group included, I ride faster than 78% of the men that wear Garmin gears while cycling. Luckily for me, I have access to the server room where I cool down once I get to work. My cycling clothes are then hung behind my office door where a fan dries them. Quick drying prevent them from stenching.

Edit: Like mentioned in the article, I don't wear a back bag but a rear rack so my back isn't a sweating mess.

noglider 

My normal commuting bike has a front rack, and I use panniers with it. I like to ride a lightweight racing bike sometimes, so a cycling backpack works well. There are two reasons: keeping the bike light, and putting the cargo weight on the body keeps the bike's handling light, since it becomes sprung weight.

HardyWeinberg

I've seen that