Bicycle through the winter

And most of it riding my granny’s old bicycle.

On my commute to work today, I experienced something very discouraging. It was my first time riding in -30C weather, and although I was dressed well enough to keep me warm, the ratcheting mechanism in my bicycle’s cassette siezed up in the extreme cold. It would frequently fail to engage properly, resulting in the bicycle not moving forward when I tried to pedal it.

This is the first time that my bicycle has failed to perform due to the weather. One of my friends suggested opening up the ratchet, flooding it with degreaser, and putting in a light oil with a lower freezing point instead. This would work through the winter, but the disadvantage is that the ratcheting mechanism will wear out faster in warmer weather, as the light oil is only an adequate lubricant at the lower temperatures, and doesn’t perform without the extreme cold. Also, this is a permanent conversion, as it’s impractical to get real grease back into the ratchet once the light oil is in there.

That was not an option for me because this is my good touring wheel, and I intend to put 6,000km on it this summer and can’t have it wearing out due to having inappropriate lubricant in it’s ratchet.

I remembered that my friend had shown me his fixed-gear winter bike, and that he claimed it was superior due to having increased control over your traction as you ride. I remembered riding it and thinking it was excellent, but that I still preferred having a choice of gears while riding.

Well, now that my ratchet has failed me, I see that I have no choice. I must convert my winter bicycle into a fixed gear.

So I purchased a wheel built with a Surly flip-flop hub (that is, a hub that has threads for a freewheel on one side, and threads for a fixie cog + lockring on the other side). Unfortunately, the shop was sold out of fixie cogs, so I bought a single-speed freewheel and a beefy 1/2” chain to use in the meantime, until I can get a fixie cog on there.

The conversion went extremely well. I replaced my 50/42/28 triple chainring with a single 40T chainring, and where there once was an 11-32T 8-speed cassette, there’s now an 18T singlespeed freewheel.

I find the 40-18 gearing a little bit high, with some difficulty climbing icy hills, so I’m going to try to find a smaller chainring to use on the front. And hopefully the fixie cog I ordered will arrive soon.

Advantages of fixed-gear for winter riding:

• No shifter cables to gum up in the cold
  

  Shifter cables are more likely to freeze up than brake cables since there’s less force acting on them.

• No ratcheting mechanism to freeze
  

  Fixed gear is always engaged, so the bicycle is always responsive to your pedalling. You can even pedal backwards!

• Beefy 1/2” chain endures wear/strain better
  

  The chain is a lot larger and stronger than an 8-speed chain, so it can take a lot more abuse.

• Braking is less relevant
  

  Having brakes on a fixed-gear is less necessary as I’ll be able to slow down and stop by resisting the movement of the pedals. Since my rim brakes don’t perform that well when they’re covered in ice anyway, this will be very advantageous. Some people are crazy enough to ride fixed-gear bicycles without brakes, but I’ll be keeping mine for emergency stopping at intersections and such. This is city-riding, after all.

• Better traction control
  

  Since you’re unable to coast, your feet can always feel what the wheel is doing at all times. When you lose traction, you can feel it directly. This allows you more control over how the bicycle moves and how you compensate for loss of traction.

All this, and the only real disadvantage is that you can’t gear down when you’re going up a hill. Luckily, my commute is relatively flat, so I shouldn’t have any troubles with it. Wish me luck!

One of the problems I’ve run into with winter cycling is that, even though it’s incredibly cold out, I always break a sweat from the exertion of the riding. Generally, underneath all the bundled layers of winter clothing, I experience quite an unpleasant moist/clammy feeling almost all over my upper body.

One of the gifts I received at Christmas was a Merino wool undershirt, a garment that claims to wick moisture away from the body, while steel feeling dry to the touch even when it’s wet. Well, I can say for sure that this works! Riding is now a much more pleasant experience as I no longer feel this moisture, and I’m altogether much warmer.

Last winter I dabbled a little bit with winter riding, but this winter I’ve decided to commute to work by bicycle, every single day.

The bicycle that I’ve chosen to use is my trusty 1988 Kuwahara SuperTour, the same bicycle that I rode to Vancouver on last August. I had originally purchased a Norco Scorcher to be a cheap winter bike that I could run into the ground, but unfortunately it has an issue with it’s frame geometry prevents me from riding it comfortably. What happens is that my years-old knee injury acting up, and it doesn’t seem to matter how I adjust the seat, or a number of other factors. So, I’ve given up on the Norco and have resigned to subjecting my touring bike to the harsh Edmontonian winter.

Yesterday was our first real snowfall, and I had to ride home from work without having studded tires on my bike, which was incredibly scary. The bike continually fishtailed and would frequently spin out where the slush was thick enough. Fortunately it did not take long to calibrate my riding style to the slush, and I was able to keep the bicycle under control at all times. I’ve installed studded tires on the bike today, however, and I’m looking forward to seeing what kind of difference it makes.

Getting ready now, changed out the batteries in my blinkers on the winter bike. A old vistalite, the three diode first version with a amber lens.This is mounted on the back of my rack. The law says red but I’ve got other red reflectors to be legal and amber is more see-able. A red cateye five diode sticks out at axle level about six inches on the left rear. I also wear a flashing reflective leg band below my left knee.
The front lamps are a serfas five diode headlight and a cygolite dual beam. the cygolite is just two six watters but give a long run time and a pretty good pattern. The serfas I’ve got more at windshield level, it’s really a white bright “be seen” light.
The bike s tubes are wrapped in reflective tape, red on the rack and rear fender,yellow/orange/red on the main tubes and yellow on the forks with a silver front reflector on the left fork.
This thing isn’t pretty but is pretty bright.
Stitches and bandage is off my hand so I can ride with a glove again, looking forward to that.
Oh well, now I’m committed.

Sliced my right hand at work on a really nice’n’nasty piece of sheet metal. Seven stitches in the pinky.The rest of the hand was just bandages and tape wounds. Kind of interesting really, thinking of all the aerobic exercise I do, I saw the meat inside did look more like free range beef than veal, one of my last thoughts before I went into shock.
That was almost three weeks ago, had to drive, had to support the poor oil companies,watched my hard won fitness decline into jelly muscle.
Finally got to ride last Monday. Had all the power and grace of a slighty overweight warthog, but felt so good to be self propelled again. Rode the winter bike (granny chainring,sissyboy) for two days then had the Ti bike out today. Geeze, I’ve got some fittness to make up, and now Steve Pool says rain. Oh well, could of been worse, I did manage to miss the tendons.(Well other than THAT, how’d you like the car ride, Mrs Kennedy?)
So we begin again another time of Bicycle Through The Winter.
gears to you….leo
ps, who ever put the picture of yours truly up, thanks Jim, you did get my best side.leo

So, who’s in for winter riding this year? The forecast is already starting to look a little bleak. From the weather service today:

A COLD FRONT WILL USHER IN A RATHER COOL AIR MASS THURSDAY NIGHT AND FRIDAY. SNOW SHOWERS WILL FALL IN THE CASCADES ABOVE 4000 FEET BY DAYBREAK ON FRIDAY. THE EXTENDED OUTLOOK FOR NEXT WEEK IS CALLING FOR BELOW NORMAL TEMPERATURES AND ABOVE NORMAL PRECIPITATION FOR THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST.

I’m relying on the official calendar to tell me when Spring is here and Winter is done, since I’m either in LA where you can’t tell, or in the Central Coast, where you can’t tell either, ‘cause spring and summer are colder than winter! Now, THAT is a run-on sentence if I ever wrote one!

Cheers to all, you are brave and hardy souls!

Mark

and I’m already snapping pictures of myself with cherry blossoms in the background, I guess I’ll mark this one “done”.

1,252 miles since November 1.

As Claire said, thanks, everyone, who joined in this goal. The days are noticeably longer!

I’m also officially retiring my winter cycling gloves, for obvious reasons.