Welcome Back

Exactly two weeks ago today, I officially picked up my second cold bug of the season (already). The first was a paralyzing head cold last month. This was a throat, ear canal, gross mucus flowing every direction in my head type cold. My ears were so plugged that my left eardrum would twitch every now and then from the pressure. Besides being out sick two days of work, I also stayed off the bike for awhile. I probably mistakenly rode into work on Tuesday the 4^th and then was out sick the next two days. I was at work after that but not well enough to ride in. Last week, I played it cautious and still drove in, which was probably a good call. This week though I started the week driving in. Not because I felt sick, but from just plain laziness. Once out of the routine of waking up that little bit earlier to bike in, it was hard to get motivated.

Well, I kicked myself in the pants today and got back on the horse…er…bike. My alarm went off at my normal early “bike commuting” time, I got up, went to the bathroom, thought about biking in or not, and then went back to bed. I even set my snooze timer. After maybe only two minutes lying there, I said. “No. Get up. Bike to work. You’ll regret it if you don’t.” So I got up a second time and got ready to go. (I’m sure that in the darkness my wife was rolling her eyes at my noticeable back and forth decision process.)

Today though maybe wasn’t the best day to get back to bike commuting. The high today I think was 48 degrees, but the worst was the wind. Traveling south, I didn’t notice it too bad in the morning, but there were sustained winds from the north at 20 mph, gusting to 30 mph. Biking back home after work though…yeah, that just plain sucked. I noticeably lost some fitness being off the bike for two weeks, but the rough headwind just killed me. I don’t remember a time that I have struggled in the wind so much. It was probably only a mile into my 5 ½ mi commute back home that I laughed at the depressing thought that I was already beat tired, but wasn’t even a quarter of the way.

What makes things even better is that tomorrow’s weather is more of the same. From the National Weather Service website:

“A 30 percent chance of rain before 1pm. Cloudy, with a high near 50. Windy, with a north wind between 15 and 25 mph, with gusts as high as 35 mph.”

Wonderful. I think I’ll get to bed early tonight.

Horses Don't Have Gears

Adding my recreational and commuting miles together, I have biked 2146 miles so far this year. I really would have liked to have done more, especially recreational miles, but I digress. The thing that does however amaze me about my total miles is that every single pedal stroke of that total has been aboard a single speed bike. My burly mountain bike is single speed, my old 1978 Schwinn shifts so poorly that I ride it as a single speed, and my new Surly Cross Check I have set up as a single speed. I even did a 50 mile ride/race that had some pretty large hills.

There’s just something about riding with only one gear. All you have on your handlebars is your brakes. Things are just more simplistic and boiled down to a more raw relationship between bike and rider. When I’m on a downhill, I either spin the pedals like crazy or stop pedaling and coast, because the gear ratio can’t keep up to the fast coasting speed. On the flats, I just keep spinning a good fast cadence. On the hills, well on the hills I just go for it. Again, I have to keep a decent cadence. If it’s a long hill, I naturally get more and more tired, and with that said, my speed and my pedaling gets slower and slower. If I pedal too slowly, I basically come to a standstill. I guess really my strategy is just to attack a hill with a good sized effort right away and just hopefully hang on until the top.

Now of course, I can’t always hold on. There are times when I just have to get off and walk. Luckily for me this has been with hills that geared cyclists have or would have to walk up too. Walking is just part of the game. I totally accept it that I might have to from time to time. It has been said of single speed riders that you do actually have three gears – sitting, standing, and walking. It’s hard sometimes for my ego to take, but I always just say “Hey it’s a single speed!” right back to it. (My ego then just settles down, but still demands that I walk faster.)

I get asked all the time why I like to ride single speed so much, and while I like to explain that it’s easier to maintain my bike (specifically the drivetrain) or that it has taught me to have a better pedaling cadence, I often think of something else. The answer that I really want to say is along the lines of “well, horses don’t have gears.” It’s not the perfect analogy because horses can’t coast downhill, but think about it. Horses can do anything from pulling an Anheuser-Busch wagon, to racing in the Triple Crown, to long distance races like in Hidalgo. They can’t shift up or down. It’s all in their legs. It’s just like running, really I guess but with coasting and usually longer distances.

Hmm, saying single speeding is just longer distance running with coasting is tempting to use as my new explanation. Still, there’s something about comparing yourself to horses. It’s like I have Clydesdale power. Yeah, I’m definitely sticking with the horses. My ego likes that better.

The Iceman Cometh

For the most part nothing surprises me much anymore in regards to the weather. Sure, I remarked last week about having a blizzard one week, below zero temperatures the next, and then hitting 50 degrees the next. Well today it was ice. I guess it really wasn’t full-on ice. Yesterday it rained, snowed, sleeted, and everything in between. As a result the roads were covered with a half frozen mix of snow, slush, and ice. It was probably my worst commute to work I’ve had.

The ride home wasn’t much better and was actually made worse by the freezing rain / sleet that were coming down. While it was nice to just up on a bike and leave work right away instead of having to scrape a car windshield like many others, I didn’t appreciate the pelting precipitation on my face. Safe to say I regretted trimming my beard last night. If I was going against the east wind, which of course was also the direction of the rain / sleet was from, it wasn’t so bad I suppose. I knew where the bad patches of icy and slush were from riding this morning and was able to ride more easily even in the waning sunlight. What did catch my attention was the layer of ice that was forming on my gloves. At first I thought it was road spray that was getting on my gloves and freezing. Then I got home, got off the bike, and took stock of the rest of my parts. Not only were my gloves covered in a layer of ice but so were my jacket, helmet, and backpack. This was a new one to me. I’ve been wet from rain and have had snow stuck to me but never ice. I suppose this is yet another good reason to bike every day. I never know what I could miss and what new experience is down the road.

What's With the Wild Wisconsin Weather?

Two weeks ago we had our midweek blizzard, which kept me off the bike three out of five workdays. Last week I only biked to work on Monday as the rest of the week was too cold. If the morning air temperature wasn’t below zero, the wind chill factor always was. Not having eye / upper face protection and warmer gloves for that bitter cold, I regretfully took the car. In all of January I only missed biking to work one day out of the whole month. In the past two weeks, I’ve missed seven days out of ten.

With that all said, what does this week bring weather wise? Oh, it’s just a complete reverse of weather. This week the high temperatures range from 35 – 55F with low temperatures from 15 – 35F. This past Friday the morning low was -9F with a daytime high of 25F. Two days later, Sunday’s temperatures were a low of 29F and a high of 46F. I can’t remember the last time the weather took such a swing.

By no means am I complaining though. It was nice to be able to bike home tonight without as many layers and even without a jacket. I don’t know the last time I was able to only wear a single light pair of gloves. Instead of having to slow down for slippery snow, I instead had to slow down for the giant puddles that all of that snow had caused from melting. There was enough snow melted away that I might even be able to get Ol’ Blue out and leave the burly mountain bike at home in the stable. We’ll see. Of course I’m hoping winter is behind us, but as always I’m sure there’s at least one more substantial winter storm or two coming. Knowing this crazy weather, it will probably come in April.

My Other Bike Is a Tauntaun

It’s been a solid week now since last week’s bike commute home, otherwise known as “Snowfest on Wheels.” The meteorologists all said we were only supposed to get 1-3 inches of snow during the day but by 1 pm there was already 3.5 inches on the ground and it was still going. By the time us regular bike commuters suited up to go home there was 4-5 inches on the ground.

As two of my coworkers and I set out for the ride, we all knew that it was going to be an adventure. The frontage road that we start off on gets traffic, but not like a through road, so the snow was plowed and driven on just enough so you could bike on it decently well as long as watched out for patches of slick slush. Once we turned off of the frontage road the real fun began.

The Southwest Commuter Path was full of unplowed snow that was however crisscrossed with ruts from other bikes that already had made the passage through. If your balance and handling was perfect, you could stay right in the track that someone else had made. As soon as you hit the side of that rut however, you had to jerk on the handlebars to stay upright and use all of your might to stay upright. I affectionately call this “pilates on wheels” as you’re using a lot of your core muscles to stay up and moving forward. The large 2.1 inch tires on my mountain bike were not helping my progress. Neither was seeing one of my coworkers just slice through the rutted snow with his inch wide tires. Normally, my big tires can float on fresh snow. That night however there was just too much wet heavy snow and too much traffic that had gone through it.

Normally I turn off onto the street after just over a half mile of the bike path, but when it snows enough I continue on the path and do my “snow route,” which takes me just a half mile further than my normal route. I struggled with my coworkers on another mile or so of path before I turned off onto another path that cuts along a golf course runs to a decent traveled road. As soon as I turned off, I hit rough snow and had to jump off and walk. Because of the rough snow, I wasn’t able to get back on the bike and ride so I had to trudge through the snow, dragging the bike to the road. Once I hit the road, I took to the sidewalk and the trudge continued. I finally got to a section of sidewalk that was freshly run through with a snowblower (I waved to the homeowner) and was able to mount my bike again and get going. Sure there was some covered sidewalks, but the snow was fresh enough to plow through, fresh enough that it was fun riding. Eventually I crossed the busy intersection that ends this stretch of route and made my way to a less traveled bike path beginning at a YMCA and running to my part of the city.

This bike path had far less action before I got there. There were only two sets of wheel tracks and one set of footprints (pretty sure it was someone pushing one of those aforementioned bikes). The snow was fresh and pristine so I got bulldoze through the snow in a good clip. Most of the time the snow was around the 4 inch mark, but every now and then there would be a drift that the snow was hub high. At those points I just had to build up momentum beforehand and hold on as I went through. The worst part was the hills, which normally are quite small. However, with all of the dense snow bogging the bike down, that simple small incline turned into a mountain. It’s been a long time since I biked (or did any exercise for that matter) that made me dry heave, but I needed that type of effort to even attempt to get up the ascent. On both of the two “major” hills, I needed to get off about ¾ of the way up to catch my breath and start walking. I know I stopped a third time somewhere along that stretch of path just from being so tired.

After the YMCA bike path, I was in the homestretch and had just a mile of road before home. Here I just took the road and dealt with the few cars that shared it with me. The road really wasn’t that bad – here I realized I should have just stayed on the roads and taken my normal route home. I biked that small stretch home and only stopped for a stoplight, where I’m sure all of the drivers around me thought I was crazy. At home, I opened the garage door and grabbed the ice scraper brush. I had to do something to dust all of the snow from the bike.

Once I managed to trudge up the stairs to our apartment, take a shower, and change, I felt completely dead. It took me a half hour longer to get home and I hate to fight to stay awake at only 7 pm. Still with that said, what did I do the next morning? I jumped on my bike and began another day of bike commuting.