The weather dilemma

 Today presents a classic case: a significant storm has been brewing all week. The sensationalist news outlets have played up its worst potential. Where it's bad, it could be pretty bad. The organizers of the Seacoast Century bike rides on the New Hampshire shoreline have canceled the event. But I see the sun and bits of blue sky. The big stuff isn't supposed to come down for a while yet. So do I ride to work and roll the dice on conditions for the evening half of the commute?

When my commutes were less than ten miles -- sometimes a lot less -- total for the day, I would ride in all weather. I also didn't have a car, so if I didn't ride I walked. In the blizzard of 1983 in Annapolis, Maryland, I snowshoed the six or seven miles across town to work. Coworkers who had cross-country skis and lived just a few blocks from work phoned in because they had better things to do on a day when central Maryland got a visit from New England conditions. Now I live a hilly 15-ish miles from work, for a 30-mile total day. The route follows roads that aren't safe for walking, let alone skiing. If the bike option doesn't work, I'm sealed in the capsule, stuck in traffic.

When the probability of precipitation is at 50 percent or higher, but the amount is a tenth of an inch or less, and the day length doesn't crowd the evening ride, I will most likely ride. Unfortunately, sunset already puts me in twilight on the best of evenings, let alone when thickening clouds, increasing rain, and rising winds give passing motorists even more to deal with.

We've reached the part of the year in which motorists don't expect to see bikes in morning and evening rush hours. Some of them get downright resentful when presented with some idiot on a two-wheeler, obstinately defying weather and darkness when any normal, rational person would drive a car and really get in their way. How is sitting behind a fully lane-blocking vehicle for ten miles better than having to slow down a little -- maybe -- and diverting slightly -- if I'm lucky -- to pass me on a bike? We never get to have these discussions when I'm getting honked at or close-passed by someone driving a monster truck, who's sick of accommodating whacko idiots on bikes after a long summer of putting up with them. Quit already!

Malice is fairly rare, but drivers can still have trouble coping with the challenges of darkness and weather that can lead to conflicts with vulnerable road users. If everyone in a motor vehicle slowed down as much as would actually make their passage safer, they would barely travel above biking speed anyway in a good thick rainstorm in the dusk. That ain't happening.

Today's forecast with summer daylight wouldn't raise a question. I'd be suited up and out the door. We're on the fringes of the storm anyway. That's too bad in a way, because we need the rain. We don't need the wind, though. Most of the trees are still in summer green, so high winds will take more of a toll on limbs and weaker trees. And, speaking of wind, it will be a headwind on the way home.

The worst case when I drive due to weather is if the weather doesn't happen and I could have made it both ways. Worst case when I ride is that the weather doubles down and I'm plodding into the gale while getting soaked. Then add the deeper dusk of a stormy evening.

We're in the part of the year where the day gets shorter even as it is beginning. The sun rises with increasing reluctance and scurries away with increasing urgency to share its light with the bottom half of the planet. We don't have the margin for error that spring and summer lavish on us. The transportation cyclist has to decide for the entire day in just a few minutes at the start of it.

It's "Rain its Ass Off Week."

 A League of American Bicyclists email arrived in my inbox, announcing that it's Bike to Work Week. Wolfeboro used to make a big deal out of it in the late 1990s, and maybe slopping over a bit into the 2000s, but they largely ignore it now.

My work week doesn't line up with normal people's weeks, so for me it begins tomorrow.  The forecast has gone from possibly showery in the afternoon to a washout. In fact, Wednesday through Friday look like they will all deliver badly needed rain to our drought-afflicted area.

Last Saturday I defied the weather  to ride the bike. The morning was dry, with bright sun in a blue sky until shortly before I set out. Clouds thickened as I rode to town.

The actual rain arrived near the middle of the day and increased. The temperature topped out in the 50s (F), prime hypothermia conditions for people who think that peril is reserved for the deep freeze of winter. With proper attire it's just grossly uncomfortable. And that was the theme for the ride home. I was wet within the first two miles, but warm enough from the exertion as I climbed to the height of land on Route 28. From there I faced a two-mile descent. In fact, the only climbs from there all the way home are short interruptions to the general downhill trend. On a warm, dry day it's a relief to have gravity on my side. Facing a wet, chilly easterly wind it's just another kind of grind.

The worst problem with rain riding is wet shoes. I have addressed this by using vapor barrier socks on the inside and bread bags over the shoes on the outside. The bags are about as effective as expensive commercial shoe covers, and sometimes more so. I don't ride with cleated shoes anymore, because I want to be able to walk easily if the need arises, without damaging expensive specialty footwear. And I eat a lot of bread.

As for the rest of me, I wear enough mid layers to preserve functional warmth even as the outer shell leaks and my own sweat wicks outward. It's time-limited, but the system has worked well enough to last as long as the duration of my ride. However, it's better when I arrive home with a bunch of wet clothing than when I arrive at work that way.

For many years, a natural food store in the unit below ours had refrigeration compressors running in the basement, creating a perfect space in which to dry wet bike clothes. Sadly, they have been gone for a long time now, and the basement is a dismal place of perpetual chill. Wet clothes in the morning would still be wet at the end of the day. This influences my willingness to launch into a wet forecast.

Rainy weather on Bike to Work Week is just another joke. How do we know when a powerful aurora borealis display is coming? The forecast calls for clouds. Same with meteor showers, planetary convergences, blood moons, eclipses... In the grand scheme of a commuting season, weather will interfere a few times. Bike to Work Week only matters because the publicity increases awareness. Non-riders might be looking to see who is out there. It's a chance to have a greater promotional impact. Hard to say whether that impact would be positive or negative when drivers peer through their rain-streaked windshields at some saturated idiot pedaling doggedly through the deluge. Come on out! It's fun!

"Look what riding a bike all the time does to your brain. That boy there doesn't even know to come in out of the rain!"

A lifetime of commitment to reducing fossil fuel use just looks like soft-headed lunacy, especially now that we have electric cars. And extolling the benefits of physical fitness is ableist and body shaming. Ya tone-deaf bastard! Read the room! The heroic defiance of the elements just looks stupid. Or it's admirable dedication, but not an inspiration.

Truly, you do have to choose your motivators. Our paths weave and blend in confusing ways. In the course of your life you might travel alongside someone for a year or two, only to have them veer away as their goals take them to more conventional measures of success.

This is a good time to mention that transportation cycling can actually cost you mileage. I often don't get to ride on my days off, because I'm doing essential things that I don't have time for in the margins of a work day. I hate to miss an opportunity, but a ride chews an hour or two out of a day when I might have other time-consuming tasks like stacking firewood or painting the deck. Or I have a packed schedule of numerous shorter activities. I know that thirty miles are waiting for me on the next workday, with roughly half bracketing each end of the hours at the shop.

The commute is not an easy ride. It requires a cumulative thousand feet of climbing for the day, and the stress of interacting with commuting motorists for the entire distance. As the season advances to peak summer, the number of motor vehicles increases. We generally get along, but it pushes my pace to claim my space.

I had to keep from laughing the other day when a rider who lives in Wolfeboro complained about drivers towing trailers on the road that parallels the lake shore. "These guys go by and their trailer is only two feet from my handlebar!"

Two feet? Nice! Try a wall of tractor trailer tires six inches away as the rig takes forever to get by you on a rainy morning in traffic on Center Street. To be fair to the truck driver, I was trying to get him in front of me so I could get the draft. I try to avoid situations like that now...mostly. I do love a draft, though.

I haven't decided yet if the weather and I will be giving each other the finger as it spits on me and I defy it, or if I just can't work the logistics of a wet ride in. Most of that depends on whether the ride in will be wet.

Memory of meals missed

One afternoon, in the redwood forest, my traveling companion and I had set up our tent in the bargain campsite provided by the California parks department and gone for a little wander among the enormous trunks soaring up to a canopy you could sort of forget about as you examined the vivid green undergrowth in the filtered light. Trees that big seem more like topographical than botanical features.

We returned to find other campers setting up. One was a German woman with a blonde crew cut, riding a touring bike. The others were a couple of hitchhikers, a man in his 20s and a woman who appeared barely old enough to qualify for the description. The road of summer is full of travelers trying their wings for better or for worse.

The young man had just finished a summer stint cooking at an inn in Vermont. He and his companion had traveled across the country swiftly enough to arrive in the redwoods in early September. Still summer, but only technically, the time just after Labor Day is a great one for traveling.

While my own companion and I had given up on culinary gumption and opted for a big skillet full of scrambled eggs, we soon regretted our haste as we watched the young chef whip up something that looked and smelled far more elaborate over the same fire pit.

To make matters worse, he could play guitar and sing. This he demonstrated after supper. We had been joined by a soft-spoken woman with long, straight hair, who asked if anyone minded if she did some background vocals. My own companion, a guitarist and singer herself, stayed in the music circle. I, possessed of only grunts and croaks, wandered the periphery of the firelight, still in awe of the immense forest. The music drifted over me with the flickers of firelight as I tripped over unseen obstacles and got up again, still in the trance of that random convergence of talents in this enchanted place.

Yeah, at the time I also felt like a boring, miserable toad with nothing to contribute. But I was taking it all in anyway.

The next morning, my companion and I had to move on. We had a deadline in Eugene, Oregon, and a few hundred more miles to cover. The chef was making blueberry pancakes.

Several days later, in Oregon, under steady rain, we converged with the crewcut German woman again. I liked her because her watchword was "coffee." "Coffee? Coffee?" she would ask. Even a big jar of instant looked fine to a caffeine freak pushing a loaded bike over wet roads and bunking down in a wet tent each night.

Her name was Marianne. She told us that she had stayed two more days in the redwoods with the chef and his girlfriend, emerging only to go to the little grocery store nearby to get ingredients for the chef's next creation. She said she finally tore herself away because she realized her bike shorts were getting tight, and she was in danger of just settling in there for the winter. We traveled together for a couple of days, eating our own miserable fare, as she described the chef's creations, to give our imaginations a taste of that little bubble of feasting and conviviality.

She left us to rendezvous with other travelers. We rode onward in the rain, a little hungry.

Instability in the atmosphere

"Showers are going to precede the front this afternoon and tonight. Then the front is going to stall over us," said the weather man this morning.

He didn't mention that it was going to stall right there, just to the west of town. Watching it on the radar I would have said the rain would be pouring sideways on gale force squalls half an hour ago. I can see it building and building without getting here.

Pretty annoying when I already called for the choppers. But there are few hospitable places on my route where I could take decent shelter if something large and electrical came through. I've lost more bets than I've won, trying to beat the weather around here.

Windows

Rain dots puddles between crumbling sheets of ice on the parking lot.  The temperature has drifted up to 34.5 from 31. Occasional downpours grow more frequent as we work up to this afternoon's flood watch.

It's a good day to look out windows.

After our little piece of the Polar Vortex rolled off of us the prediction of warmer temperature made me keep an eye out for winter cyclists. I don't blame anyone for staying in their burrow when the temperature is 3 and the wind is 30. But the way many riders correlate temperature with their desire to ride means that they come out in the greatest numbers when the roads are the sloppiest with briny silt.

Oh yeah. I want me some of that.

Granted, the greatest numbers are none too large. But still, the majority fixates on warmth rather than the advantages of subfreezing temperatures.

A lot depends on how much water has been around.  Extensive ice will call for studded tires. Most riders don't make that investment.  Most motorists don't even make it. So road crews have good reason to try to eliminate ice from the travel way.

Winter conditions for anything are tricky. This is true of cross-country skiing,  hiking, climbing, walking your dog, taking out the garbage, and anything else that takes you outdoors. That's why the living is easy  enough in summertime to warrant having a song about it.

My favorite winter riding conditions are a sunny day with light winds and a temperature no warmer than the mid 20s. If the sun is strong it may melt some ice and snow,  but not enough to be a total slop fest. You can wear enough layers to be able to vary them as conditions require.

All my physical activities have been imaginary for about a month.  I have no trouble convincing myself I have better things to do than ride a trainer. If I could ride home on a  bus equipped with treadmills that would be perfect. Exercise would be back in "drive time."

I've always liked just looking out windows on a crappy day.

Been thinking as well about one of the schisms in cycling, between the Transportationists and their self perceived antagonists, the contemptible Recreationists. As someone who will do nearly anything on or from a bicycle I hate that riders have to divide into camps. But I understand it as well. My faction is the people without factions. It's fun to ride in many ways.  Just not today.  It's gross out there.

Kickin' back under the stars

Riding out the path on Saturday night through frosty air, between frozen lakes, with a sky full of glittering stars, I kept thinking this would be the time to ride a recumbent. It's not my preference in most cases, but sometimes it would be nice to pedal a lawn chair. Recumbent trikes are particularly suitable for sky gazing because you don't have to worry about balancing.

When the weather is bad, with rain, sleet and wet snow I wouldn't want to lie there, supine, letting it all just pool in my lap. In conditions like that it's nice to lean forward and let it roll off my back. And a little of that is plenty anyway. I'll take it for a short commute. For a long ride, stormy weather would make a velomobile seem like a great idea.

The variations of human powered vehicle are numerous. This might actually discourage some people who want to pick the "best" bike when there is no best bike. Certainly the configuration we've come to recognize as "normal" is the basis for the most versatile form of the machine, but even there we see great diversity for different habits and habitats. Best is often a compromise. How much better it is than worse or worst may be a slim margin in some cases.

For those of us addicted to using the human engine the temptation to acquire a fleet of vehicles is strong. I'll go further and say that it's a guilt-free indulgence compared to a fleet of vehicles that require fossil fuels, spew crap into the atmosphere and have a lengthy death toll associated with them. Indeed, those other vehicles present the biggest obstacle to people who might want to push the limits of their pedal-powered vehicles into winter conditions and darkness. It's bad enough with ample daylight and warm weather.

Motorized vehicles and equipment could have a place in Biketopia, constructing our travel routes and keeping them passable. And of course a well-developed rail network would serve a large network of communities for when quicker travel in spiffier attire was required. But then, humans set the standard for required spiffiness of attire. Maybe we should just get used to seeing each other in more casual clothing better suited to self-transportation.

The human powered vehicle industry could take up where the auto industry leaves off after the transition to healthy and sustainable personal transportation. Imagine Detroit and the Rust Belt coming back as the pedal-powered powerhouse of industrial renaissance. Imagine the road network of the United States devoted mostly to pedalers, with a few token "car lanes" stuck on the sides of some of them. Ha!

I never forget that I have financial advantages that many  people in the world do not. I'm relatively poor by American standards, but those standards are pretty warped. If I had to limit myself to one bike I could. I have it all picked out. But I would still make seasonal changes to broaden its capability.

Transportation costs money, even if you're just buying a pair of shoes. The economy adjusts to people's purchasing habits as people's purchasing habits adjust to the economy. If human powered vehicles dominated the transportation mix, they would pick up peripheral expenses from all the entities that make it their business to add peripheral expenses. Governments would require registration. Somehow the insurance industry would manage to get a hook in. Bike parking garages would have a regular fee schedule. All sorts of shady repair facilities would spring up. And the bike industry would continue to add dubious innovations that make repair more complicated and ownership more expensive, just as they are doing now with hydraulics, electronics, shifting systems and exotic materials. In absolute dollar amounts it could never rival the expenses and collateral costs of relying on motor vehicles, but in an adjusted economy the relative expense per person could rise to a comparable level. We could live on less money, but a similar proportion of it would be sucked out of us by the associated economic factors.

Some associated expenses are legitimate. Losing the revenue from motor vehicle registrations and other taxes and fees coughed up by the motoring public, governments would need to make up some of it to maintain the transportation routes formerly dominated by the smoking jalopies of a bygone era. Human-powered vehicles would damage the surface less, but weather still takes its toll. And human-powered travelers would benefit from facilities and amenities not yet constructed, or carried over in a modified form from the motor era. And without a doubt we would see increased enforcement of traffic laws related to human powered vehicles. Ever see those speed limit signs on bike paths? Ever whiz by the 15 mph sign at 20 or more and laugh about it? Now imagine some cop on an e-bike hiding in the bushes just beyond it. Yep. It could happen. It would happen.

Traffic laws could become more enlightened regarding rolling stops at stop signs, but cyclists need regulated intersections as much as motorists do. Imagine the carnage if everyone just blasted into intersections at whatever speed they could manage and tried to intimidate their way through. There would have to be some basic principles and someone would have to act as the referees.

I doubt if we have to worry about it any time soon. But it wouldn't be a bad worry to have. I would love to undertake the challenge of making a mostly human-powered transportation culture work. But it can't be achieved with an unwilling majority. Coercion is tyranny even if the end result appears beneficial. Process is important too. Process is vital. Consensus is indispensable. So that's the first challenge.

Owner Modifications

This rider has added a tail light and a clip-on fender.

The fender protects the light from rainfall. Right?

It also protects it from prying eyes.

Without the fender in place, the tail light would barely be above the curve of the rear tire anyway.

People's seatpost fixation makes many tail light placements nearly useless. If you just want to create a personal delusion of safety and use up a lot of batteries, go ahead. If you want to be seen, get those lights up and out.

In the case of this rider, the spray off his rear tire will severely test the water resistance of that light. Also, the flying flap style of fender does nothing to keep the water and grit flowing around the rear tire from spraying forward beneath the fender onto the backs of the rider's feet and all over the mechanism of the bike. All it prevents is the trademark butt-stripe. Meanwhile, with no front fender, the water off the front tire is happily hosing down the rider's face and feet from that end.

It's Wednesday, so it must be rainy

On Thursdays I pay a musician to be my friend. A local musician and teacher holds a weekly string band session. For a mere $10 I can sit in with whoever shows up for an instructional jam. Consequently, during string band season I drive on Thursdays because I have to cover 35 or 40 miles with a musical instrument.

The way I play I should pay everyone in the group. But so far they keep letting me in. Comic relief?

With Thursdays off the bike commuting list, that makes Wednesdays all the more important. The weather has established its own routine, bringing showers or outright rain week after week. If it's too nasty I lose a riding day.

Park-and-ride season puts most of my route away from traffic, but on an unpaved surface. The path may actually be less messy when it's a little wet than when it has been very dry. Path dust is fine, powdery and pervasive. It gets all over our rental bikes, coating every part not covered by the rider. My own bike develops the same gritty coating if I don't do anything about it.  Regular rain keeps the dust down and the surface firm as long as the rain isn't heavy enough to turn the susceptible areas into mud.

Ideally the rain falls at night for just a couple or three hours around midnight. Not on Wednesdays, though.

Days like this are the reason they invented fenders and raincoats.

A Pint Low

The information package they gave me to read at the blood drive yesterday said I should avoid strenuous exercise for five hours after donating. Does riding 15 miles in wind, snow and rain count?

I had never donated before. Because I planned to drive today, I wanted to ride yesterday. The forecast called for a chance of showers in the late afternoon. Chance. Showers. I have fenders. It'll be fine. So I rode to town. At noon I went to the church where the blood drawing was set up.

The screeners liked my pulse rate, blood pressure, hemoglobin level and general fitness. They raved over my large veins. Then they had trouble establishing a satisfactory flow, or so I gathered from the conversation between the phlebotomist and her supervisor as they jiggled the needle around. I wasn't watching.

"You'll feel a little poke," the technician had said. Indeed I did, followed by a strong impression that they were digging for my humerus with a hot wire.

"Keep taking deep, relaxing breaths," they told me. What else could I do? I had a mission and they'd already made the hole. After a minute or two they got things settled. I squeezed the little rubber thingie in my hand periodically to enhance the flow and wake up that hot wire sensation again.

By donating blood I not only contribute to the lifesaving stocks of blood in reserve, I also get to find out my blood type for free. I need to know my blood type as part of the compatibility criteria to see if I can throw my wife a kidney or if we need to get involved in one of those chain-reaction donations becoming popular with the live-donor set. Once it becomes totally routine, people may even do it at parties. Imagine swapping all sorts of body parts at a wild revel on a Saturday night.

"I woke up with one green eye and one blue one. Is one of them yours?"

"Yeah, the green one, but you got it all red."

You could actually have two left feet.

As a first-time donor I took seriously all the stories I'd heard about people jumping up too quickly and keeling over right afterward. I lay there a bit before walking carefully to the snack table, where I drank a pint of water and ate some excellent crunchy stuff, a small bag of raisins and a chocolate chip cookie. Then I walked back to work, where I drank more water and stuffed down lunch while I assembled a bike.

I couldn't linger at closing time because I needed to rip home to get to a zoning board meeting. It hadn't been quite five hours yet, but I had no other options.

The chance of showers had turned into dark gray skies dumping wet snowflakes into a gusty wind. At 36 degrees, nothing was sticking to the road. It would just be raw and unpleasant. And so it was.

I kept meaning to get out my camera to document how nasty it was, but I never did. Pictures can't convey the feeling of a raw wind slapping fat snowflakes in your face. They don't portray the creeping wetness, the steady chilling of arms and legs. I didn't want to change my position and give that wind another way into my collar, so I faced front and kept pushing the pedals.

The snow and rain passed to the south after ten miles or so, but the wind still cut. By the time I got home I really wanted to take a hot shower, put on comfy lounging attire and put my feet up. Instead I just had time to feed the cats, put on some dry clothing and drive off to my meeting.

Today is dry and milder but I have an evening engagement, so I did not ride. A warming trend promises improving conditions for the weekend. I'll have regenerated my blood by then, too.

The Great April Fool's Day Blizzard

We didn't get a foot of snow. We didn't get six inches of snow. We probably got four or five inches that snapped a few tree limbs around the area. I've heard that 25,000 customers were without power in the state. And of course people smashed up their cars. But that's a national pastime.

I drove to work on the slick roads without incident. A small shipment of Surly bikes awaited my attention along with some early season repairs. Since I had jumped into the full commute with no base miles, I needed a couple of rest days.

The snow continued to fall as the morning went on, but it melted on contact. It even seemed to melt on contact with the snow that had fallen overnight. Some days are like that: the air is thick with flakes that vanish when they land. A day of snowfall leaves nothing on the ground. It's fine with me. Snowblowing the muddy, rutted driveway would just gunk up the machine. Slop like we got yesterday just splatters out a few feet beyond the chute. Better to leave it to melt.

The highway crews laid down a new layer of abrasive sand and corrosive salt. Even if the roads are clear of snow and slush it's a setback. Cold mornings and rough, messy roads add several minutes to travel time by bike.

The sun is strong. Conditions improve.

Nothing up my sleeve...except the rest of my jacket

For what it's worth, I came up with this simple, obvious way to turn my wind jacket into a streamlined bundle for easier carrying on the rear rack of my wet weather bike.

As easy as 1

2

3

I usually just roll it and tie it around my waist, but the day was a little warm and I didn't want to block my jersey pockets.

Sleeve-stuffing turns the jacket into a more tubular bundle than any other method, and perfectly restrains extraneous flappy bits.