A year ago I decided I would try to use my bicycle to get to work and back every day. To be fair the trip isn’t that long, about 3.5 to 4 miles depending on the route I take so I figured it should be doable. If nothing else I planned to save gas and wear and tear on our truck. On a normal day I need to make two round trips as I have to come home and let our dog out of the house for a break at midday. The gas savings shouldn’t be trivial either since our gas ranges from a low of about 6 dollars a gallon to about 8 at times.
A lot of people laughed when I started, telling me that as soon as it started raining, I would stop, maybe I would make it through the summer but no way would I ride through the winter. If anything that made me more determined to prove them wrong. I managed to make it through the summer riding nearly every day and decided I would ride as deep into the winter as I could stand just to see how it all worked out. As I normally do, I did a lot of research into the subject and found one classic line from a bike commuter in Oregon on riding in the rain, “your going to get wet, get over it”. Good advice, rain gear doesn’t help much in a light rain as you are just going to sweat covered in plastic.
There is no doubt there is a fitness aspect to it, but since I don’t have a way to shower and clean up at work I have to ride there in the clothes that I will be working in. I also currently use my military A.L.I.C.E pack to carry things I need at work as well as dry clothes when it is raining, my coffee supply and such so I’m not very well set up for workout riding. I do spend time on my lunchtime trip doing things like interval drills and working on my form but the trips are short, usually a low of about 14 minutes to a maximum of around 20 depending on the road conditions and weather. Not a great workout but it sure beats riding in a truck.
About the only times I can’t ride are days when I need to pick up freight at the airport, usually one day a week. Also, anytime I need to go to the post office since we normally have boxes and I don’t have any realistic way to carry them. The airport freight is normally our weekly shipment of vegetables so I can pretty much schedule that.
Originally I was actually getting a pretty good workout from these trips but as I have lost weight and got in a little better condition I find myself burning fewer and fewer calories on the same trip, I have resorted to making my first and last trips of the day slightly longer when I can and pushing a little harder during my lunch time trips. My normal lunch ride consists of clocking out, jumping on the bike and starting the various fitness trackers and so forth that I use, riding home, stopping all my gps toys, letting Snowball out for her break, and doing it all over again on the ride back to work where I clock back in. Normally start to finish is about 45 minutes.
Recently I heard about another benefit from this, I started recording my trips using an application called Charity Miles. It is a free application that records your rides or runs and various sponsors donate money to the charity you choose based on the miles you log. Another reason to log a few extra miles when I can.
The cold this winter took a bit of adjusting to. I originally stopped riding at about -20℉, mainly because my hands were getting too cold, after experimenting with some different types of mittens I got that down to -30℉,At this temperature it is actually the bike limiting me. The winter chain lube starts to thicken so much it makes the bike hard to pedal. Also, at anything below about -10℉ I find that it is useless to try to shift gears after a few minutes in the cold so I stay in one gear for most of the trip.
Starting out another year I have identified a few things that I will change;
- I really need to put some fenders on this bike, I bought a set that was supposed to do the trick but the back fender was kind of flimsy and wouldn’t stay adjusted. Constant riding in the rain and slush have permanently ruined a couple of jackets so far.
- The backpack works, but a good set of panniers would haul my gear and keep the center of gravity a lot lower, not a trivial consideration when you consider I ride on ice for a lot of the year.
- Studded tires, I debated the value of these and to be quite sure most of the winter they wouldn’t help much, the funny thing about icy roads is they actually get slicker as the weather warms up. So much so that in spring it gets pretty dangerous to ride on and consequently I can’t push as hard and don’t get as much of a workout as I should. Next winter I’m going to go ahead and put a set on the bike.
- Better/more lights. Of course the bike had no lighting when I got it but I got a set of LED lights that are rechargeable for the front and rear. They do a good job of letting other people see me which is important but my LED headlamp does a better job of lighting the road for me. I’m on the lookout for something better this summer.
Hopefully I’ll make it through another year without serious incident and I might even manage to push my low temperature limit down a bit in the coming year.