Corybantic

I had an incident with a snow plow on Jan 26th. I didn’t write about this back then because I was hoping this would have ended in a fashion in which I felt acceptable. It didn’t so here is the story.

My typical commute in the morning is roughly 3.5 miles to the train station. At which point I lock my bike in a bike locker or bring my folder with me. This morning was a light snow and I had my larger bike with the snow stud tires. When I got to the train station in an uneventful ride I realized I had forgotten my locker key. So I turned around to go home and get the key.

Before I begin for those without my familiarity in riding in the snow, the most important thing you can do is be smooth and do not have abrupt actions. As long as your motions are fluid you can ride in almost any weather.
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The last 3 weeks have been filled with bitter cold, snow, sleet, rain and snow.

I have ridden through ALL of this weather. By this point I have pretty much nailed down my clothing strategies. So pretty much nothing fazes me right now.

One morning several weeks ago I became fazed. As I turned out of my development onto the main road the bitter bitter cold wind hit me. It was single digits without the wind chill. I was wearing wool long sleeve shirt, my warmest wool sweater, a down coat on top, gloves, hat, face mask, leather dress shoes, and khaki pants. That last part is were I went wrong.

My commute to the station is only about 13 minutes long. So I don’t wear much warm clothing on my legs, but this day by the time I got to the station my legs were numb with cold. Lesson learned.

Another area of gap was eye protection. The only exposed skin was my nose bridge, eyes, and skin around my eyes. The wind just stung. Next time it is this cold I’ll be breaking out my ski googles.

Someone sent me a link to http://carfreecambridge.com/ today. This got me thinking about the actual costs of a car.

If I take my $166/month savings and invested that into an investment that received 5%/year for 30 years that would result in $138,452 after 30 years. This is just run-rate savings. It doesn’t even include the cost of the car.

Today I commuted to work in an icey down pour. The roads were very slick with ice. I got to the train station with no issues thanks to my snow stud tires. After arriving I was sad to look at my freshly lubed chain. It had rust on it from my short juant through the slushy salt mixture.

Once in 2010 I broke a chain. Once in 2010 a link frooze so badly on a chain I had to replace it. I typically clean/oil my chain once a week, but still the water, salt, and grim really wear the chains quickly. This is my most annoying point about commuting by bike.

My new metrofiets will have a belt driven drive train with an internal geared hub. I’m super excited for this to arrive and hope this solves much of my drive train problems.