Briefly:

... if you were driving past Billings Bridge Mall this evening around 5:15 or so, and came upon a cyclist at the intersection of Bank and the Billings Transitway exit, holding her bike up with one hand and kicking angrily at a huge ridge of slush and snow that had been thrown out across the bike lane by the plow, breaking it up and shoving the resulting bits of slush to the side of the road with her boot...

... well, that was me. Doing my civic duty.

Snow down

Yesterday it snowed most of the day: little flakes. I had to leave Mike at home, though, not because of the snow, but because the day's plans involved me catching a lift to Barrhaven with a friend at the end of the day and I didn't want to have to leave him at the office. So I didn't have to try and navigate the roads with new snow down (and possibly a large number of drivers who didn't have winter tires yet.)

But this morning I woke up to the radio telling me that it was -6 out and there was a predicted low of -8, and the sidewalks were all white. And I discovered: I want some kind of formula to apply so I know what to wear in the morning. Something like this:

Temp > -5: jacket/sweater combination A
Temp > -5(R) where (R) = rain: jacket/sweater combination B (including rain pants);
Temp < -5(S) where (S) = slush ... you get the idea.

As it was, I overdressed, in my puffy winter coat and a sweater, and wound up with an overly warm torso, chilly fingers, and a cold breeze running down my neck. (My new Writers Festival toque does, however, fit under the helmet, so my ears were fine.) But the ride wasn't that bad. And it was bright! The sun on all that snow absolutely lifted my spirits.

Once I got to the pathway I started to realize that I won't be able to take that route much longer. It was white from Hurdman to the Queensway underpass. Then it was clear - someone had actually put salt down - as far as River Road in Overbrook: and then suddenly the path was white again - a thin flat layer of snow. My treads are pretty good, so I had traction, but any deeper and I could have been sliding. And I definitely concentrated more as it was.

I had a momentary fantasy on the way of inventing some kind of trailer I could pull behind me that would spread road salt as I biked, like a sort of vigilante path groomer. Of recruiting the mothers with strollers and the photographers that hang out by the river into a small private army of pathkeepers. I wonder if that's even legal. Are there laws against spreading salt on paths in public parks? Who put the salt down between the Queensway and River Road anyway?

Wolcum Yole: or, Winter's Here...

I happened to be up in the wee hours of the morning this morning (like, at about 4:30 AM) and so I saw the snow starting to fall, and I wasn't surprised when, after I went back to bed and got some more sleep, the roofs outside were all white. Last day of November, and there's finally snow.

But, it had pretty much melted by the time I made it to work. It was a tough slog, but maybe because of the lack of sleep, or maybe because the rainpants drag a little on my legs, or maybe because Mike's gearshifts really need a tune-up. Still, my eyes watered and I had to churn into the wind, but I stayed more or less toasty. When I bought my coffee, though, the girl behind the counter exclaimed at how cold the coins were. (Yeah, I said, I just spent 40 minutes on a bike with them in my jacket pocket, so it's not surprising they're cold.) It's cold and bright outside - heading down to -4 this afternoon, so I'm bracing for the ride home. And yet, remembering that you don't have to bike is sometimes just what you need to get in the saddle. I try to bring bus fare with me. That way I know I have an option, and somehow that makes me decide to bike.

I think it's related to the trick my ex-climbing partners used to use on me when I was about to give up on a particularly tough problem. "It's okay," they'd say, "you don't have to do it, you can come down if you want and try again later." It was the surest way to keep me up there trying the problem over and over until I finally got it or my muscles gave out on me.

My other sign of the season? The weekend's wind knocked down little chunks of dead branches all over the bike path, and they haven't been cleaned up. To paraphrase Dr. Seuss, the maintenance teams' drawbridge is drawn and it's going to stay drawn till spring thaw, or a little thereafter.

Here goes, for real.

Illuminated!

A couple of days ago a co-worker said that she was heading to MEC, and did I want her to pick up a new headlight for me? I had been mentioning that I needed one, if only so I didn't have to leave work at 4:00 in order to catch the light, but it's hard to find the time to get all the way across town. So I said, yeah, sure, and went online to figure out which one to send her off to get.

I used to have a Planet Bike Beamer. A little LED that could be quick-removed from the mounting on the handlebars and double as a flashlight. But I discovered that it didn't really throw enough light to make the trip home along the path very comfortable. I remember midnight runs home, peering into the darkness, with a faint little circle of light on the pavement, failing to show me the potholes, rocks, and branches until I was basically on top of them.

I needed something that would provide light to see by, not just visibility to cars, like a Turtle light, but you can spend upwards of $90 on a commuting headlight, and MEC had one - "for 24-hour races and competitive night riding" the catalogue said - for about $400.

Then I spotted these (MEC brand "Sharks"), and the catalogue suggested that for $12.50 each, you could get two and double up. Well, of course! So, I did. They're super-bright: the day I got them I headed home around 9:30 PM from an after-work meeting, and was astonished. They cover the whole path. They're bright enough to light up the ceiling of the highway underpass. And it was actually quite beautiful, getting on the bike path with the city lights across the river all shining on the water, and putting on my headphones and zipping along in the dark cold, listening to "Ideas" on CBC as I pedaled.

It was even better last night, when I went out for a drink with some friends after a reading in the Market, and we suddenly looked up to realize it was 2:30 AM. It wasn't raining anymore - it had been earlier in the day - so I packed my rainpants into the pannier, flicked on my lights, and headed off for the canal. I had the whole canal path to myself, and it was still warm enough out that I didn't even need to wear my mittens, and at that hour of the night there's no stress. The streets are all yours. And I had plenty of light to see by on the pathways, and I knew that the cars that were out could see me. Freedom! I no longer have to scurry home before dark like some sort of small diurnal scavenger!

And come on, doesn't it look like Mike's got beady little eyes? Aren't they cute? Doesn't he look like WALL-E?
(The friends I was with last night think I should get four or six more and line them up along the handlebars like deerjackers. I'm half tempted. It would make Mike look like the low-tech version of a truck from a post-apocalypse movie. Which would be awesome.)

Fellow Travellers

I was having a terrible ride home today. It was raining, and by the time I was climbing Bank Street it was dark. I don't know why it is that people seem to be worse drivers in the rain - maybe it's a matter of my perception, maybe not. It's true that in the rain, the cars are louder. They seem to cut closer to you, and to be more impatient. I swore out loud at someone in a black truck that passed me with about a foot of clearance, and then again when a minivan nearly made a left turn right into me. I was bitching out loud at them all, and at the unfairness of having to worry about being critically injured or killed by my goddamn commute. (Once again, the thought crossed my mind that it's very strange how people who find out I enjoy rock climbing think I'm some kind of crazy daredevil, but don't bat an eye at my biking to work every day.)

And the traffic was just awful - backed up all the way down Bank. I was dodging around the cars trying to angle in off side streets and keeping an eye out for anyone that might be cutting in through the lines and turning left, and I got stopped up behind a bus that was trying to merge back into traffic, so had left no space for me to get between it and the curb. So I stopped, waiting for the bus to budge, and then I heard, "It's awful today, isn't it?"

There was a guy behind me on a commuter bike in a yellow rainjacket - older than me; I'm fairly certain he had grey hair under the helmet. I said something like, "Yeah, and they always seem to drive worse in the rain," and he nodded.

"Well, it's all clogged up," he said. "I haven't seen it this bad in a long while."

And then the bus moved a little, so I slipped between it and the curb and pedalled on up to the intersection. The light was red, so I pulled up. The guy was still behind me.

"How long are you going to keep riding?" he asked me.

"Long as I can," I told him, and mentioned that I use the River Path, so when the snow gets deep I'll have to find a streetside route. I also told him about the rumor I'd heard from the NCC about keeping part of the western path clear this year.

"Does that help you?" he asked me, and I said no, not really. "But it's a start, right?" I said.

"Yeah, it's a start." And then the light turned green and he said, "Have a good night," and I said, "Yeah, you too."

Biking on up the hill to my place, I felt a lot better. Something about the question: "How long are you going to keep riding?" There was a companionability about that question, and a sense that we both knew anyone out there in the cold mid-November drizzle in their rain gear was probably a committed cyclist. Still riding at this time of year, and in weather like that? The question isn't whether you're going to be riding in the snow - the question is how much snow you're going to try to handle.

Sometimes a little smidgin of esprit de corps can really improve your day.

Chilly Morning

There were frost stripes on the way to work this morning: lines of frost on the grass that matched up with the shadows of the trees. That's one of the things I think I like about November. It was probably hovering around freezing, bright and sunny. Where the sun hit my black jeans was warm, but I had wool mittens on to keep my hands from getting too cold. And where the sun hit the ground the frost just vanished: on the east side of the street, though, in the shadows of the houses, the grass was dusty-white.

The weather and the daylight are getting more tyrannical as winter comes on. They dictate more. It's interesting, in a way. My headlight died back in September or sometime, and until I get a new one, I have to stick to lit streets or get myself off the pathway before dark actually falls. With sunset falling at 4:35 (as of today), I need to get on the road by at least 4:20 in order to make the main streets by the time it gets too dark to see. It sets a real, cosmos-induced limit on my schedule - not something we're used to in the 21st-century West.

And I have to check the weather before I head out, too - is it cold in the morning? Will it get warmer through the day? Should I pack the raingear? It makes a bigger difference than in the summer, when getting rained on doesn't really inconvenience you much. Now, I'm starting to think I should just have my raingear with me, at all times, in case of snow or sleet or rain. I got caught a couple of weeks ago. When I got home with soaked clothing, after a terrifying ride through the dark along a major street in the rain, I was completely surprised when I started trembling in the elevator to my apartment. I hadn't thought it was that bad, until I got home, and got the shakes.

So I stick to the daylight when I can (I biked in the dark to my rock gym last night, but it's a well-lit, wide street. Had it been raining, I might have opted to bus it just that once.) And I have to plan ahead more. It helps, though, with some of what I find hard about winter. We're usually disconnected from the seasons, and so we wind up, in winter, working through the day, arriving in the dark and leaving in the dark, and wondering why we're depressed; standing shivering waiting for the bus with the wrong jacket on a damp night and wondering why we're sick. Biking is actually forcing me to pay a little more attention, and that makes the season a lot easier to live with.

Freedom

Last Christmas, my parents gave me freedom, in the form of a full set of rain gear from MEC. Of course, I didn't really know it was freedom at the time. I knew that it was a parently gift: it came with a card saying, "Happy, dry trails - Mom and Dad," and like the gift certificate I got for my birthday when I first started biking (the one that I knew, although it wasn't stated, was given in the hopes it would be used on a helmet, which it was) it made me smile. Sure, I'm a grown woman, but my mom and dad still worry about me out there, on the roads, in the rain.

I didn't know how much it was going to change things for me. It was the middle of winter, and although Ottawa was in the middle of a horrific transit strike, I wasn't biking too far, and even when I did, I was wearing a parka. But then spring rolled around. And as soon as the snow was (mostly) off the Riverside Path, I was out there, with my gloves and warm sweaters on, skidding and slaloming my way through the ice and slush on my way to work (because the bus strike had also taught me that I could bike in pretty much anything if I had to.)

And spring brought rain (and freezing rain, and wet snow, and snizzle.) And I discovered that what I thought was a bright red rain jacket, black rain pants and boot covers was, in fact, freedom. The first morning that I woke up and saw there was cold, needling rain coming down, I bundled up in all my rain gear, and feeling a little like an astronaut - the boot covers in particular made me feel that way; they're dorky as hell, but do they ever do the trick in keeping rain from running down your legs and into your shoes - I wheeled Mike out and into the elevator, and proudly smiled at anyone riding down with me. Yup, that's me, heading out into that, on my bike. I'm hardcore.

It was liberating. I got on the bike, wrapped up my Velcro wristbands and stuck my mp3 player in the little zip pocket (I know, we'll get into the ethics of the mp3 player later) and regardless of the downpour, off I went. Not even avoiding the puddles. I think I actually enjoyed blasting right through them, with the cascade of water thrown off my front tire and onto my legs. I was a force of nature. I was a duck. I was a cyclist in the rain.

I thought of that today because it was another hot, oppressive day when I left for work this morning, and it was obviously going to rain. I brought a change of clothes for the office, and when I felt the first sprinklings on my way out of my apartment, I didn't blink. When I left work today and there was a full-on rainstorm in progress, I didn't blink. I biked home. I loved it. Of course, it's the middle of summer and the rain is warm. I don't mind getting soaked. But it used to be that I would think twice and take the bus if it was pouring out. Leave Mike at the office and pick him up the next day. Maybe in fall, when it's cold out there, if I've forgotten the raincoat, I'll do that. But right now, I will bike in the rain and I will love it.

There's a lot fewer people on the trails when it rains, and you can just skim along. The river is beautiful in the rain. The puddles are warm when you splash through them and douse your feet. The breaks in the clouds (because these summer storms come and go in fifteen minutes) let through sparkling sunshine that catches in the beads of water on your arms. And once when I was coming home I watched the front edge of a rainstorm actually make its way up the path toward me - one moment it was clear, the next I was watching a wall of rain come toward me, the next it was driving into my skin so hard I think I said, "Oh!" When it's hammering down rain, you just push on through it, and as soon as you're soaked it becomes like swimming in your clothes - freeing. The grit on your feet and ankles is even lovely. And today I came out of the rain into a patch of sun and the pavement on the trail was smoking in the sudden heat, and I slashed through a patch of steam that smelled like earth. And you start wondering what the hell it was you were thinking when you dashed from sheltered area to sheltered area in the rain.

I think I might have continued to think you can only bike when it's dry, though, if it hadn't been for those freezing mornings in my full-body rain gear this spring, when I watched the rain roll right off me and realized I can go anywhere, in any weather.