More wayfinding

Ah, a new year. Back to Ottawa and back on the bike this week, all kitted up in the new merino base layer and with the pant legs tucked into the boots... and still struggling to find a route to work.

Back in December when the snow first flew I found myself trapped on the back roads of the Cyrville Industrial Park and swore I would never try that again. I had talked over possible routes with other friends of mine who have a decent Area Knowledge modifier (to use gamerspeak) and worked out how many points there are where you can safely or sanely get across the highway. (Bank Street, where you can go under it at Catherine; Lees Avenue, where you can go over it at the Nicholas/Mann snarl; Riverside Drive just before Coventry, which is unpleasant.) So yesterday morning I set off down Heron, re-acclimatizing myself to the slush after a couple of weeks off the roads while I was visiting my family.

I decided to try Lees. So I took my usual route down Alta Vista to Hurdman, only to discover that when I'd walked the bike the length of the Transitway station, the pathway to and from the cluster of apartment buildings at Lees was uncleared: a foot-worn track that you couldn't bike along. I stopped for a moment, and an OC Transpo employee came out to say, "You look a little bewildered." I explained that I was trying to get to Lees Avenue, and she told me, not unsympathetically, that the only way was to walk the bike along the path. So I walked it back along the station to the path entrance, and shoved Mike, clogged with snow, from the station to Lees Avenue: the picture here highlights the amount of my trip that was spent trudging through deep snow. (Good lord, was it really nearly a mile? No wonder I was late for work.)

Lees Avenue was pretty slushy, too, and busy with cars who were all either still in highway mode or about to get into highway mode, since there's an on-and-off-ramp system to the Queensway there. I was happy to get to the other side of Pretoria Bridge, where I could get onto the canal path, and saw that the path had a strip of bare pavement down the middle of it. I  spotted another woman on a bike coming across the intersection. "Is the canal path clear through to downtown?" I asked her.

"I don't know, it's my first time here," she said, "but it's clear all the way back to Lansdowne. From Bank Street to Dows Lake, though, it's blocked off."

"But it's clear to Bank Street?" I said, hopefully, and she told me it was. Oh, happy day: this meant I could take the path home all the way to Old Ottawa South. So I got on the canal path and it was plowed and more or less clear, with little patches of ice or slush, all the way downtown. I crossed the canal at the Laurier Bridge, and took Laurier all the way to where it turns into Charlotte and meets up with Montreal Road. By then I was really tired (snow, deflated tires, and extra trudging took its toll), and the last little slog through Vanier was kind of painful. I was shaky by the time I got to the office, but I can blame some of that on bonking because I hadn't eaten breakfast; I'd gotten into town the night before at 11:30 PM and there hadn't been time to shop for groceries.

But hallelujah, I had finally found a route that I can actually use to get to work! Now, my path looks kind of like this:

 

I have to say, I used to have some real problems with the NCC. But this makes up for any differences we may have had in the past. I don't know what I'd do without the Skateway, and the cleared and salted canalside path it gives rise to. No cars. No buses. No terror. For at least most of my trip.

Tourism to the rescue!

I've got my wool to keep me warm...

For Christmas, my parents, who want me to stay warm, gave me a base layer set - an undershirt and leggings - from Icebreaker, a New Zealand company that makes Merino wool clothing. I got the mid-range base layer (200) - which should stand me in good stead through most Ontario winter days, especially if I'm on the move. We'll see: can't wait to test it out on the bike. I've already worn it cross-country skiing and it performed just fine.

Merino's pretty nifty stuff - it insulates, it breathes like crazy, it's super lightweight (you'd never know this stuff was made from wool: it feels almost like cotton, just warmer), and when it does wear out, which won't be for quite some time, you can compost it. This stuff is really thin, and it's surprisingly soft. In our family we listen, every Christmas Eve, to A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas, and the narrator talks about "aunts who always wore wool next to the skin" and who give "mustached and rasping vests that made you wonder why the aunts had any skin left at all." This is not that wool. Far from it. I wore it out skiing on Christmas Day and most of the day on Boxing Day. So stretchy, so soft, so warm.

So, I'll have to try it out on the roads, when I get back to Ottawa and Mike. I'm really looking forward to having the leggings to wear under my jeans - what is it that makes denim so very very cold?

I found a tag on the shirt that gave me a unique "BAAcode" that, presumably, allows me to trace the wool in my item to the sheep stations it was grown on in New Zealand. I don't know if I believe that or not, but I did go check it out on their site, entered my code, and found out where my shirt was when it was on the hoof. And then I spent a while just clicking around reading about merino, checking out videos of the station owners, looking at pictures of herds of wooly sheep. Great website design. I was totally sucked in.

Now... I get to find out if a New Zealand sheep can grow wool that can hack an Ottawa winter. Hah!

You know it's winter when...

Mike has left a possibly-permanent set of salt stains on the carpet outside my apartment, right underneath where the rear tire and the front set of gears are when I stand him in the hallway to thaw after I get in. The one under the derailleur is the worst: chain lube plus salt plus road grime plus slush is not kind to carpet.

Well, I'm not about to bring him in to thaw and drip all over my hardwood floor, right?... I leave him out there for a half hour or so to drip dry, then open the door and allow him in. A little like a dog that's in disgrace.

It's amazing how much snow he brings in with him. The tires throw slush back against the underside of the frame and up into the rear set of gears, where it sticks and clogs around the gearshift cables. It almost feels futile to clear it off, since I'll just get the bike coated again the next time I go out, but I know I should. It's also true that I go through lubricant like a fiend when the weather's bad. Not that you tend to notice a sticky gear or a grinding in the pedals while you're teetering along at three-quarters speed, keeping an eye out for patches of ice or ridges left by the plow, but in the back of my mind I'm always aware that I'm putting the bike through really, really unkind conditions, and if I don't want to replace most of the drive train in the spring I should probably be wiping it down, lubricating absolutely everything, and probably trying to protect the paint job while I'm at it.

I see some debate out there in the blogosphere over using fixed-gear bikes for the winter; the sort of single-speeder that you usually find in either older style bikes, or seriously heavy-duty ones. The idea is that winter is so hard on your gears, and you're so unlikely to be traveling fast or hard enough to need more than one gear, that you're saving yourself a lot of replacement parts and headache by switching to a simpler bike with fewer working parts. The only downside is having to work a lot harder on hills (and you really don't want to stand up on the pedals on a slick, icy hill.) It's a moot point for me: even if I wanted to get a second bike, I don't have anywhere to keep it. As it is, Mike is dripping on the floor inside my apartment because there's no bike parking downstairs.

So, I have to do what I can to protect my bike's delicate bits. MEC (bless their hardcore little hearts) posted a great set of tips for winterizing your bike. New Years Resolution: get that midwinter tuneup, some studded tires, a can of WD-40, and a gallon or so of all-purpose lubricant.

And a rubber mat for the hallway. Sooner or later my landlord's going to complain.

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.)