Gelid Mane

To commute by bike in below freezing dark one must be demented, desperate or devoted. Expect fingers and toes to be painfully stung along with any exposed spot. Deadly cold feels almost as if being branded by a red hot poker from hell. Easy to add a wool base layer beneath neoprene bib tights, tunic and windbreaker for arms, legs and torso, but what about fingers, head and toes? A slew of websites offer partial advice. Always asked to explain further, even though covered in book.

Head may be swaddled in a balaclava, plus a wool skull cap to ease brain freeze as long as helmet still fits, but prepare for helmet hair, an unmanageable mane of flattened straw and stubborn cowlicks, yet it’s wool you can grow and trim. However, doesn’t protect face. Wrap around safety glasses, clear or yellow for low visibility, at least hold heat and shield eyes. For ears, mouth, neck and nose, a foot wide fleece tube can be pulled up around cheeks; one guarantees it will become drenched with gelid exhale, wet freeze, but can be peeled and shifted however you please. By pursing lips you can redirect breath to avoid fogging lenses and momentarily blinding you, why you never use goggles unless easy to quickly remove. Sequence of donning correctly can confuse and consume time better spent dodging potholes on longer than normal trips.

Full fingered pittard gloves with leather palms that cyclists wear come Autumn and Spring don’t meet demand below 40°F, when insulated gloves must take over. Below 30°F, one might combine them or try a glove liner. Built-in wrist cinches on tunic wrap around gloves to keep cold from running up sleeves to which bicyclists are particularly vulnerable with hands ahead draped on handlebars. Whatever you do, avoid flat tires, misery for frozen fingers. Wheel set rigged for winter should include heavy tubes, Kevlar belted tires, and tire liners properly installed and pumped to normal pressure to prevent both pinch and puncture flats and provide extra traction. Some cyclists simply store equipment as soon as thermometer reading in Fahrenheit equals age in years, so deny self of all these trying travails. After a few miles body generates enough BTUs anyway to make bone-chilling rides tolerable.

At same temperature points, feet need similar protection. Calientoes, spandex cones, cover toes of cleats, thus a wind pierce preventative you can leave in place all winter, or you could slip into complete shoe covers each time you suit up. Below 30°F, neoprene booties insulate beyond. Likewise, socks go from flimsy polyester to heavy wool, some times both, wool over liners, whatever cleats will allow. Mountain bikers opt for heavy boots and ski paraphernalia. Since safety becomes priority over speed, they sacrifice streamlined for practicality. Only the best prepared or totally foolhardy venture out below 0°F, when breath turns instantly to ice, cable shifts balk, and chain grease freezes.

Depending upon gages, sensors and yardsticks at your disposal, you can collect all sorts of data, but is raw information always relevant? One cyclometer says both speed and temperature, but not whether frostbite will claim body parts or wind chill is too biting to bear. Know-how and logic preempt forecasts and reports. Microscopes reveal bacteria but don't segregate beneficial from harmful. Gyms are heated but harbor germs. Experts rather sell opinions or shut up. Wintery outdoors has wholesome fresh air to spare, better than rest of year. Scientists deny facts based upon whoever pays best. Denialists exist in cycling, who trade hyperbole and hysteria for sensible arguments from 7 decades of experience and research. Every activity possesses downsides and upsides, minuses and pluses, pain and pleasure, yang and yin. One has to question why anyone would expend a quarter century building a case for bicycling culture when most would rather risk their lives on tenuous technologies. Upon onset of winter every year you see scads of ads and articles explaining why motoring is as dangerous as mixing antimatter particles. Have biked through snow to bail out stranded drivers.

Michael Carabetta, Words to Ride By: Thoughts on Bicycling (Chronicle Books, 2017, 112 pp). Critics deride Carabetta’s compulsion to cite only the famous in this slim compilation of images and quotes. Out on a spin inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle? Maintaining balance as cautioned by Einstein? Blues beset best of bicyclists despite whatever incompatibility James Starrs expressed, especially in dead of winter with seasonal depression. Labann published 500,000 quotable words on bicycling, entirely original and open source, which with zero risk of plagiarism Carabetta never once cited.

Isaac Potter, The Gospel of Good Roads: A Letter to the American Farmer (League of American Wheelmen, 1891), cajoles with common sense, dazzles with statistics, pressures agribusiness to invest, promotes sympathetic political candidates, and reaps benefits for bicyclists by piggybacking scot free on costs to commerce. And what an impact it had! From it flowed pavement from local roads to national highways. Potter was merely a paid spokesperson for the well healed, Hannity of his day. Anthropologist Margaret Mead may have circuitously said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has,” but should doubt she meant allowing the already affluent to steal from public for personal gain under a guise of common good.

The Good Roads Movement ended officially in 1925 when the Interstate Highway Program began to ensure state roads aligned at state borders. In the last decade alone costs to nation totalled $10 trillion, at least triple that in last century. With every mile of highway now carrying an average $10 million price tag, expenditure can only rise to an unsustainable stratosphere. Meanwhile, local roads declined, railroad and tow canal rights-of-way were abandoned, and stone bridges crumbled under relentless freezing/thawing and rumbling commerce. States have begun to revive them for bicycling, mostly because it demonstrates legal compliance.

Federal laws since 1990 require bridges, highways and interstates to provide reasonable alternatives for cycling and walking. By law, lightly trafficked neighborhood streets need no further accommodation, unless less than one lane wide in each direction, when a low cost bikeway can alleviate bike and pedestrian safety issues. Roads that connect housing tracks can be paralleled by bike lanes that also serve as sidewalks with bus stops. Imagine getting stranded in a vehicle and wondering how you’d safely exit highway on foot? Instead, planners specifically restrict, falsely assuming motorists never need to, though many of the nation’s annual 10,000 pedestrian fatalities are directly due to this negligence.

With bike lanes taking up space on avenues and boulevards, controversies crop up. Motorists, who can never be relied upon to obey rules, drive and park in them, figure they’re entitled to all pavement, since they pay nearly $9,000/year for this privilege, and resent sharing. It becomes a constant battle to convince them otherwise, especially when bikeways and sidewalks, pavement not meant for motoring, don’t get plowed, so traffic lanes are all that’s left for cyclists and walkers to use, often until April. Winter impedes basic mobility for all alike, so motorists must adapt, be patient, expect the unexpected, slow by half, and wake up earlier to make up time needed to escape gridlock and scrape ice. Forced into closer proximity, frigid starts and fogged windshields threaten everyone’s passage. Bicyclists ought to dress bright and use a light both back and front; cute units can be recharged during work shift for home commute. Beware, because sensible advice nobody’s obliged to bear will never ensure anyone will care that you get there.