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Adjusting to Cool Weather Riding

10.27.2011 by Ray Niekamp // 10 Comments

As I write this, the wind is whipping around my home office window. I left work this evening with 74 degrees showing on my car thermometer. When I got home, it had fallen to 63. I just got back from walking the dog, and it’s now 53. We’ll be in the 40s overnight, and it looks like the weekend will be a cool one.

Riders elsewhere in the country and other parts of the globe are probably snickering. They’ve already gone through bigger temperature drops than this — and are already feeling the onset of winter temperatures.

But what happens to your bike riding when the weather changes like that?

My natural reaction is to throw on a sweater and cozy up to the TV — or maybe snuggle up with a book. I should be figuring out how I’m going to adapt my bike riding to colder conditions.

The answer is simple: Keep riding.

Some riders handle cool temps better than others. The guy left front has a windbreaker vest over a long-sleeved jersey, the woman has a cool weather jacket. The guy in black is wearing warmer winter gear, but the guy in center background still thinks it’s summer.

The daily temperature drop isn’t that drastic, to begin with. So if you ride one day in summer kit, maybe all you have to do when the weather turns chilly is put on a long-sleeved jersey and a base layer. That’s not a big change.

“If you keep on riding each day as the temperatures slowly decrease, you’ll be more acclimated to the weather each day,” says Emilia Crotty, the Education Manager of Bike New York. She says you kind of trick yourself into believing that there’s not that much difference from day to day.

“Personally,” she adds, “when I’m feeling lazy or am in the middle of a good book, getting back on my bike on a cold winter morning is difficult!  The more frequently I ride in the colder months, though, the less dramatic the temperatures feel.”

There’s an added benefit to continued riding. “The more frequently I ride in the fall and winter,” says Crotty, “the better I am at gauging how many layers I’ll need, what type of gloves will do the trick, if I need a balaclava, etc. each morning (when I check the morning temperature and wind chill, that is).”

So resist the urge to roll over and pull up the covers when the fall mornings are cool. Get out there and ride. You know it’s good for you on several levels — but you’ll also build up your tolerance for cold weather.

 

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Categories // Cold weather Tags // clothing, winter riding

Bicycle Touring

10.25.2011 by Ray Niekamp // 5 Comments

After reading an article by a New York Times reporter who had just finished a bike tour across the United States, I started daydreaming. Traveling cross-country on a bike has an undeniable appeal. While I had read the occasional article about bike touring, and had pored through catalogs some years ago that featured touring bikes, I never seriously considered doing a multi-day two-wheeled trip myself.

But it’s something worth considering. You don’t have to go from the Pacific to the Atlantic — a bike tour can be in your immediate area. Maybe target a town you’d like to ride to, or a body of water, or a state park. In my neck of the woods, a nice starter tour could be a trip from Austin to the Gulf Coast.

One thing I’ve learned from all my reading: You don’t need a special bike to tour. Oh sure, most bicycle companies make a touring model, and I’m sure they make travel a lot easier. But you could just as easily throw some gear on the bike you’re already riding and just go.

But if you want a bike tricked out for touring, you could try something like a Trek 520. That’s their touring bike, and it’s been available for years. At first blush, it looks like a road bike, but it’s got a steel frame, and braze-ons for racks and fenders. A particularly popular touring bike is the Surly Long Haul Trucker, which can handle wide tires. Some reviewers say it’s sluggish and heavy when unloaded, but a touring load gives it stability. Other tourists prefer lighter bikes, and suggest a cyclocross bike is a good choice for touring.

Lots of bike tourists camp overnight. Some have perfected the art of “stealth” camping — which involved pitching your tent on private property, but lying low to avoid discovery. The prospect of camping is one aspect of bike touring that doesn’t appeal to me. I’ve done plenty of camping over the years, and I just never fell in love with it.

But there is a form of bike touring that’s geared to guys like me, too. It’s called “credit card touring,” and it’s pretty much what it sounds like. You pack a change of clothes or two, hop on your bike, and ride until you reach your destination for the night. Then, instead of finding a campsite, you check into a motel. Instead of firing up the camp stove for an evening meal, you go out to a restaurant. I could do that — if I’ve budgeted for it over the year.

As far as routes go, the options are unlimited. Just get on the road and pedal. Of course, you might want to research your trip first, and see if any other touring cyclists have ridden it before you. The Adventure Cycling Association is a great resource for researching your rides, and the website crazyguyonabike.com is chock full of accounts from hard core and newbie tourists about routes and what works. One option for newer tourers is to find a dedicated bike trail that will keep you out of traffic. The Katy Trail in Missouri crosses the entire state. It’s crushed stone, so you might want to leave that road bike at home and bring something with wider tires. The Great Allegheny Passage, or GAP, trail runs from Pittsburgh to Cumberland, Maryland, and if you’re more adventurous, you can continue on the C & O Canal trail all the way to Washington, DC.

I won’t be bike touring anytime soon. But I expect to have several weeks of vacation next summer. Hmm…that will give me plenty of time to research some touring ideas.

 

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Categories // Odds 'n ends Tags // touring

An Urban Bike For the Road

10.23.2011 by Ray Niekamp // Leave a Comment

Way back in 1992, we decided we’d like to do some biking. There was one hitch: My wife, Pat, had a 10-speed Schwinn road bike, but hated it. Her back hurt when she bent over the bars, she never did get the hang of shifting the gears, and it was clear that doing anything over a couple miles would end badly. The answer, of course, was to buy a new bike.

We hit several bike shops in the area, and came up with a hybrid — a Trek 700. It served her well for its intended purpose. We didn’t ride much in town, but did throw our bikes in the trunk of the car and drove to the paved bike trails in southeastern Minnesota. Here, we could ride for miles — safely — and Pat did just fine on the hybrid.

The Trek 700. Pat still rides this three times a week. (Click to enlarge.)

Fast forward 15 years. Pat was president of a local professional organization that sponsored one of the big organized rides around Austin: the Hill Country Ride for AIDS. It was a 50-mile ride, but Pat figured that as president, she should step up, so she started going on training rides with a group of AIDS ride organizers. Her bike-savvy friends pointed out all manner of problems with her bike: The 38mm tires were too wide to go fast (a popular misconception), she needed clipless pedals to add power to her pedal stroke, she really needed a road bike, etc., etc.

Pat rejected the road bike idea, but went to the LBS on a shopping spree. She got Look Keo pedals, 28mm tires, and had them put on a taller stem that put her in an even more upright riding position to take pressure off her arthritic hip. She completed the 50-miler on that bike, and when I saw that, I figured I could do it too. That’s when the Bike Noob really started biking.

The six-speed freewheel (brand new this week) works with a triple chainring and twist grip shifters. The tall stem is evident in the picture at right.

We just had the six-speed freewheel replaced and a new chain put on. “It’s like a brand new bike,” Pat said. Earlier this year, I replaced her worn tires with a brand I’d never heard of before — fyxation. They bill themselves as a company that caters to urban bikers, and their Sessions model of tire has a puncture-resistant diamond tread. Pat’s flatted only once on these — they’re terrific tires.

The distinctive diamond tread of the fyxation tires is visible here, as are the cantilever brakes.
The Look Keo pedals ("I've never seen these on a hybrid before," said our bike mechanic) and the Specialized Dolce gel saddle ("It's okay," says Pat).

Pat is still on the same bike. She’s got a repertoire of neighborhood rides of nine, 12, and 16 miles, and will occasionally join me on an organized ride where she can do 30 miles or so.  It’s her main form of exercise, and exercise is the main reason she rides.

Pat reaches the top on a ride in the Texas Hill Country.

For people who are leery of taking up biking because of the bent-over riding position, this could be the answer. As you get more experience, a few tweaks will let you stretch your riding limits. Who knows? You might even decide to take the plunge and upgrade to a road bike anyway. The next bike purchase in this house will not be for me — it’ll be for Pat.

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Categories // Bikes Tags // Bikes, hybrid

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