So if you are reading this post, it would mean you are already considering a ride to work on a very cold day. I am rooting for you! Get out there and do it! Here are just a few things for you to consider.
Dress for It
Long Underwear - don't leave home without it.
Ski Helmet - best Christmas present I got this year.
Ski Goggles - your face will freeze without them.
Tall Snow Boots - they are ugly, but the taller the better. Leave an extra pair of shoes in the office.
Fleece Vest - the high collar will keep your face warm, and the vest will keep the mud off your jacket
Backpack - it can carry your stuff, but it will also keep you warm
Have The Right Gear
Mud Flaps - well worth the $20
Milk Crate - good for storage, and doubles as a rear mudflap
Headlamp - it gets dark really early in the winter
Taillight - I mount it on the back of my helmet
The Right Bike
Older is better - the road salt will do a number on your components... please don't use your new bike
No Clipless pedals - the ice is too slick, and the shoes aren't warm enough... don't bother
Knobby Tires - the snow and ice is slick, put on the fattest ones you can find
Low Air Pressure - even the best tires don't have much tread on the sidewalls
Adapt Your Riding Style
Stay Seated - in order to keep traction, you need to keep weight on the rear wheel at all times
Higher Gears are Better - while a lower gear gives you more torque, it will spin the tire. Grunt it out!
Keep it Straight - while learning to avoid obstacles is normally part of good riding technique, riding in a straight line is even better technique in the snow. ride right over the clumps of snow, and you will keep it upright for longer.
Be Considerate To Traffic
They Don't Expect You - remember that a biker in the snow is totally unexpected
Be Visible - they need to see you a long ways off
Its Ok To Be There - I have found it to be much more dangerous on a jagged sidewalk, than the shoulder of the road. Just keep it smooth and steady, with no sudden movements, and no one gets hurt.
Have Fun!
Ok, so I really did it today. Today I rode to work in about 3 inches of snow, and I loved every bit of it. The trip is about 2.2 miles in length, but in the swirling snow and 25 degree with a 12 degree wind chill, it feels much worse. I have really tried to make the point that if I really want to call myself a cyclist, I need to be willing to ride in any climate, no matter what.
So, to get geared up, I asked for a snowboarding helmet for Christmas, so that I would have the proper headgear for the brutal weather we occasionally get around here. My 1st few rides to work were last week, which ended up being a balmy 55 degrees and sunny. This was very uncharacteristic of our area, so I couldn't be too surprised when the weather turned sour.
Last week, it became apparent that the wind really chills on my face, even though I was suited up with layers of warm clothing everywhere else. So today I headed out with full ski goggles, thermal underwear, socks, ankle boots (clipless pedals are great, but icy conditions require an even faster dimount, and they arent warm enough) an gloves. I have a new backpack for my laptop, and other office stuff, which is nice, because the weight of it also functions as a layer of warmth on my back. I was toasty warm... for a while.
Another nice thing about riding in a northern climate is that the roads have a shoulder on them. In the south, I got used to riding on just a few inches of "shoulder" while cars went whizzing by. Here, because of snow removal, the roads boat of 4-6 ft paved shoulders that have plenty of room for any cyclist to enjoy. About 1.5 miles into the ride, the side of the road got slushy. This is worse than snow, and is caused from the salt they spread on the road to make driving conditions safer for the motorists.
I guess I crossed over onto a street that had been more heavily salted by the city, and it became slushy and rapidly nasty. Within minutes I could taste road salt all over my face, my chest was covered in mud splatter, and my butt was soaking wet from the rear tire throwing muddy ice all over my backside. Nearly 6 hrs later, my underwear is still a little soggy, and my boota are moist, and my pants are cached in mud. A few adjustment need to be made.
My buddy at work, Darrick, commented on my appearance when I walked in, and I told him that this was still in the "trial and error" phase. He suggested that perhaps I was just in an "error" phase. 1st things 1st, I need a mudflap.
Thankfully, my friend Will saw my twitter post on face book and offered me the following solution. Looks like a good option to me! I'll have to check it out another day. Today I am going to get picked up from work rather than make the sloppy return trip!
Here is an article by Ann Marie Awad on the Midnight Mass
Buffalo's Midnight Bike Ride: a glimpse of bike culture, a party on wheels, an exercise in anarchy, and plain good exercise
The corner of College and Allen is overcome with a small horde of people and bikes, both in all shapes and sizes. College kids sipping beers, adults chatting, repair-savvy men and women alike squatting in front of tires pumping air—all of this packed onto the sidewalk and slightly overflowing into the street and the gated parking lot.
Suddenly, a group of riders honk their horns, ring their bells, and for a second, the crowd goes silent. Then, after a brief shuffle of noise, the crowd divides into shouts. “Gates Circle!” “Glenn Falls!”
The shouts go back and forth until evidently a consensus is reached: The first stop will be Gates Circle. In minutes, everyone assembles and the drove of bicycles takes off down Allen, all the while clogging the streets while turning on to Delaware. They fly through red lights, overflow into car lanes. This is Buffalo’s Midnight Bike Ride.
Moe Potter is new to the ride. “I started riding it in June. Before that, I hadn’t ridden a bike in over 10 years,” Potter says. “A bunch of us actually get together a few hours before it every Sunday and have dinner, hangout, and ride to Allen together to meet up with everyone else.”
As the group reaches Gates Circle, some riders do laps around the fountain, yelling and shooting fireworks. “I almost got hit. I was not happy,” says Kate Bobbett, one of the riders, after the ruckus has ended. “We’re just a bunch of kids who wanna have fun and sometimes there’ll be someone who wants to act stupid and ruin it for everyone else.”
“It’s really devolved,” adds James McMillan, another rider. “Two years ago, going down towards Tifft Nature Preserve, there was about one third of the people who were really rowdy. There were cops involved.”
The group starts to divide. Some ride off to the next mysteriously decided destination, some retire their bikes for a while and sit on the grass in small groups, and some go home. A police officer pulls up to a small group of riders. “What’s up with all the bicycles?” he says.
One rider replies, “I dunno, they went that way.”
* * *
The Midnight Bike Ride appears to have no hierarchy, no organization, but every Sunday, close to 100 riders experience a common impulse to gather and ride. Some semblance of order is found in the ride’s Myspace page. No one person claims to moderate it, but the site details another incident at Tifft farms this past April: “It’s cool to go to the nature preserve and hang out, if we’re being respectful about it. But we don’t live there; the deer and the geese do. And by trashing the place and being disrespectful, we do them a disservice.”
Jenna Murray is a frequent Midnight Bike Rider.
The page also offers instructions on what to do in the event of an encounter with the police. “I personally have not [had trouble with the police],” says Matthew Schaefer, another rider. “I have, however heard thrilling stories, jam-packed with police chases and fence-jumping.”
In recent years, the community of active bicyclists in the city has swelled and sought improve conditions for their brand of alternative transportation. It’s a community as diverse as they are fast—and boy, are they fast.
In 2005, Greener Options Buffalo, a division of the Wellness Institute of Greater Buffalo, started Buffalo Blue Bicycle, which operates a bike lending program and a volunteer bike shop. “Very early on, we collected bicycles by garbage-picking them,” says Justin Booth, leader of Greener Options’ environmental initiatives. “As word spread about what we were doing, more bicycles were acquired than we knew what to do with. The community bicycle workshop was launched as a community resource open to the public three days per week. Anyone can come to a regularly scheduled workshop and learn bicycle repair and maintenance and even build their own bicycle from the hundreds of used bicycles recycled through our program each year.
“At the workshop, sweat equity also counts as dollars, allowing volunteers who help build a bicycle for us to have access to our tools, bicycles and parts to use for themselves,”
So far Buffalo Blue Bicycle has been a hit. On any given night that the workshop is open, all the work areas are crowded with cyclists young and old, building or customizing bikes. “My goal was to not be a helpless woman and actually learn how to fix things for myself,” says Stacy Sauvageau, a volunteer at the shop. “I was also hoping to become skilled enough to help other people learn how to do the same.”
Gregory Wilder, the workshop manager, is proud of what Buffalo Blue Bicycle manages to accomplish. “I think it’s getting more people on bikes; people that wouldn’t be able to afford bikes.” Sauvageau agrees: “I think the program helps people who are financially disadvantaged, as well as people who have a desire to learn to fix bikes that may not have the proper resources to do so.”
However, Buffalo is not kind to bikes. In the entire city, there are approximately seven miles of road that include bike lanes. In 1996, the Common Council adopted a bike route network plan that proposed 128 miles of bicycle lanes in the city. Obviously, that plan fell by the wayside. “I think there are three streets in Buffalo with bike lanes and they all run north and south and none of them are connected,” Wilder says. “I think Buffalo needs a lot more bike lanes.”
Green Options Buffalo seeks to do something about this. The organization worked with the city to adopt a “Complete Streets” ordinance amendment.
“The policy works to ensure that when a roadway is designed, constructed or maintained, equal consideration will be given to commuters of all kinds—including bicyclists, pedestrians, public transportation users, children, people pushing baby strollers and the disabled,” Booth explains.
* * *
While people like Wilder and Booth are committed to improving conditions for the city’s bike-riding community, the Midnight Bike Ride professes no such agenda and occasionally sends a few mixed messages. “I get really angry when they leave like cans of beer all over the place,” Bobbett says. “Pick up after yourself, you know? They’ll also throw stuff in the lake. It really upsets me.”
Bikers gather each Sunday night at the corner of Allen and Wadsworth Streets.
Riders also have a tendency to get injured.
“I haven’t personally had a bad experience, but I’ve seen some people fall from being intoxicated on the ride and get seriously injured,” says Jenna Murray. “It’s happened to a few of my close friends. And it’s actually really funny.”
“A few of my bad experiences involve falling off my bike and hitting or cutting my head,” Schaefer says. “I didn’t even remember falling.”
With incidents like the fireworks on this ride, or the disturbances at Tifft Nature Preserve on previous rides, and various run-ins with unfriendly police, the Midnight Bike Ride has earned a reputation much different from that of a Critical Mass ride. Critical Mass bike rides, held during the afternoon rush hour on the last Friday of each month in cities across the country, including Buffalo, are purposeful and organized, and follow a code of conduct, and are often (though not always) tolerated by police. Critical Mass rides aim to raise consciousness about biking as a means of transportation.
Christopher Fecio has participated in both the Midnight Bike Ride here in Buffalo and a Critical Mass in San Francisco. “Compared to the Critical Mass in San Francisco, it really isn’t much of a big deal,” he says. “For one, since it’s every week, it takes away from some of the power that the Critical Mass has. Obviously, they both have some things in common, such as the dedication of the riders to the idea that cycling isn’t dead.”
Fecio had a good time on the Midnight Bike Ride. “It was a really enjoyable experience. More or less, it is just a bunch of people who like cycling and drinking and they get together and do both. It was enlightening to ride through some parts of the city and down some streets that I hadn’t experienced before.”
Unlike Critical Mass, the Midnight Bike Ride does not promote any political agenda and does not recruit riders into its ranks. Its vagabond image is the largest part of its charm.
“It’s just word of mouth,” Bobbett says. “I would call it a freak party, in a way.” Read more: http://artvoice.com/issues/v8n40/midnight_ramblers#SlideFrame_0#ixzz0u9wJrM76
I went out for one of the Tuesday night rides at the Donaldson Center in Greenville. I have been thinking about doing the ride a number of times, but doing these things for the 1st time is always so much easier with a friend. In this case my riding buddy Andrew had called me and invited me to go along with him. I am so glad I did.
The Tuesday night rides are organized by ability groups. The cool thing is, that each group is still quite large because there are hundreds of riders that show up each week. I chose to ride in the C3 group. The "C" stands for country, and it is a 34 mile ride. The C1 and C2 groups would most likely be faster than i could handle. The "A" and "B" groups ride a 7 mile loop that they race around 5 laps on... very very fast. I didn't want to overestimate my abilities, so staying with the C3 group would be fine.
We didn't have much time to spare when we arrived. By the time we got the bikes unloaded the riders were about to go. Quickly we lined up and took off on our way. The group was quite large and I had an absolute blast. There were a few sprint points that the group surged out at 27-28 mph, then calmed down and spun along at a reasonable 18 mph pace.
I am looking forward to going again. I may have been in the upper portion of riders for the C3 group, but I haven't gotten the age and wisdom yet of some of these guys. They knew just when to attack, and just when to ride on my wheel and let me do all the work out front. I love it. The strategy of it all is addicting! Maybe the C2 group next time?
I had the most incredible ride last Saturday morning with my friend Austin over on the Isaqueena trail. It was a beautiful morning... the calm AFTER the storm. The night before there was a big thunderstorm, and it had even hailed in some areas. But this morning was just perfect. The leaves were still wet, so they hit you with a plump smack as you went by. The trail was slick and a bit slow, but the morning was so peaceful I didn't want to ride that fast anyway.
Isaqueena is a great place to take riders who don't have as much experience, but still get in a good ride yourself. The asphalt road runs across the top of the hill, and two long dirt roads run down to opposite ends of the lake. This creates a box with a grid network of trails in-between. The great thing is, that if your buddy gets tired and wants to go home, just send him up the road. If he wants to go off by himself, he really can't get lost. Just meet him at the car when your done.
Austin and I started out by taking some logging roads off to the the side of this main trail block closest to the Six Mile Water Tower. This ride is an an enjoyable logging road on the way up, and some fun single track on the way down. I noticed that the trail has been modified to adjust for some big trees down after a big storm last year, and I really like the new trail route.
After tooling around over there for an hour or so, we made our way back into the main block where we picked up the lake trail. This trail is gorgeous.... and fast. But man, if you don't like riding on the 18 inch path, you may find yourself over the bank and in the drink in a hurry. I like "the rock" crossing about halfway down the trail, a technical spot testing your balance and use of momentum.
After passing the rope swing by the time we made our way to the dam and climbed back up the other dirt road. At the top of the main climb we turned back into the woods onto a trail we call "center line" trail.... I'm not sure what the real name is. This trail is flat and fast. Again, this is a perfect trail for a beginner to leisurely ride if they choose, or for a more advanced rider to really drop the hammer and fly!
This trail carried us back across to the parking area we began at. It took us just 4.5 hrs to get around the trails that morning. The fun thing is, there are still many more trails to add into the ride. Maybe next time we can go for longer!