A white bike with blue spots

It was a little slushy this weekend. A little salty. A bit, well, February-ish. And so now Mike looks like this:

Note that Mike is, technically, theoretically, dark blue. But suddenly this evening, in an email to my family, I realized: he's not a blue bike with white spots anymore. Now he's a white bike with blue spots!

Cue the childhood flashback:

And just to add to the fun of this trip down memory lane, here's Betty White reading it. You're welcome.

Never a dull moment on a winter street

It snowed rather heavily again last weekend: 15 cm or something came down on Sunday. It was sliptastic. Today, though, the temperature had soared up to the -5 to -8 range and there had been enough traffic up and down the roads that I figured it wouldn't be that bad on the way downtown to my office. It was early afternoon when I headed down there (hooray for jobs that let me avoid rush hour the day after a big snow) and although my pants got wet to the knees it was pretty nice.

That is, until I got to the narrowed lanes due to construction going over the Bank Street Canal Bridge. It goes down to one lane now. There's a sign there reminding drivers not to pass bikes, for just that reason.

For a bit, it's wide enough to pass a bike safely, so I stay to one side, but as I got toward the middle of the bridge and the cars kept passing me, making it impossible for me to move over and take up the lane, I started looking behind me almost as much as in front, trying to find a gap in the passing motor traffic to get out and into the lane. When a white cargo van came up behind me and gave every sign of intending to pass me. At this point the lane was probably only a couple of meters across. I turned as I started to move left, saw the van attempting to gun for the narrowing space between me and the median, and shouted, "No you do not, you DO NOT PASS ME!"

He faltered, and I moved into the middle of the lane, and he backed off, and I rode firmly in the dead middle of the lane all the way to the stoplight, where the street goes back to two lanes. Then let the van past.

But, once I was downtown and the streets slowed down a little, I was comfy, even with the stretches of slush that had somehow been missed by the plows. I got to the office, did the things I needed to do, and decided to head home before sunset because of the lousy condition of the roads (pothole city).

But by now I was into rush hour. And it was an - eventful - ride home. First there was the odd phenomenon that while the east side of the street (Bank, which runs north/south) was relatively clear of slush, the west side had a thin layer of slush spread over the entire right lane for most of it, getting more and less dense and more and less thickly spread, but pretty consistent. (I guessed that the east side had had more sun during the day, which probably melted it.) So I had to concentrate a bit more when I hit the slushy patches, or come further out.

In the Glebe, a big black pickup (no lift kit, I don't think, but it was a tall truck) passed me, as I was sluicing through one of these stretches of slush, then slowed down, almost as though pacing me. I looked over, trying to figure out what they were doing. The passenger was looking out the window straight at me, smiling I think, saying something to the driver - his mom maybe. Then they accelerated a bit, moving over into my lane as though trying to cut me off. (No turning signal, of course.) I said out loud, "What are you doing? What the hell are you doing?" and then shouted out loud as they really started moving into my space. I guess they thought I'd just hit the brakes and let them cut me off.

Yeah, right, I'm going to hit the brakes in the middle of an inch-deep patch of slush.

So I kept going, and they had to get back into their lane and let me by and then do whatever boneheaded thing they'd been going to do. At the next light, I heard a voice behind me. "You ever just shout and swear at em?"

I turned around and the guy behind me winked. Older than me, with a beard and a nicely craggy face, and kitted up for winter riding. I nodded and said, "Yeah, all the time." He commiserated about people who just do stupid shit, and mentioned he was visiting from Vancouver. Told me a story about getting right hooked by some idiot a couple of days back in Vancouver, and I said something about how annoyed I am that they don't hear you when you shout, and he said, "sometimes they do, it's the best thing you can do most of the time, just shout at them and wake them up to what they're doing." I told him about my cargo van from earlier, and that I thought maybe screaming at it had made the driver back off. We talked for a while, even though the light had gone green, then I said, "Hey, have a great visit," and he said, "Ride safe," and we both pedaled off.

Which made up, in part, for the moron who decided it was a good idea to get mad about waiting for the car ahead to make a left turn, yanked the wheel over, and slammed on the gas to pull out and around him - cutting me off as I came by in the through lane. Or the man that zoomed past me with a couple of inches (really) to spare when I was trying to avoid a foot-wide, two-inch-deep pothole just before the Billings Bridge. And the several other cars that did not, although they had the space to, move a lane over while I climbed Bank Street past the river. And in particular the shouting, throat-hurting climb up Heron Road in which I screamed out loud at two consecutive cars (one of them a Blue Line taxi) that sped past me at about 70 kph and about a foot from my leg.

See, the right-hand lane had been narrowed down by snowbanks - two- or three-foot-high snowbanks - to only about as wide as a car. Not as wide as a car plus a bike. Not that many of these drivers had decided to make any concessions to that.

And then finally there was the burst of sheer rage in which I shouted, "Fine, to hell with all of you, I'm riding right here in the exact fucking middle of the lane and you can all just DEAL!" And I did, on a burst of rather cathartic fury, the rest of the way home.

Because that is, in fact, in actual really for true fact, the only safe place you can be when the snow has made the roads this narrow. If you move right even a couple of inches off that right-hand tire track, the drivers will think they can pass you, safe or not. It's way safer to be slap bang in the middle of the lane, pissing drivers off, causing them to rant impotently on comment boards and Twitter about asshole cyclists who don't know any better than to get off the roads in the winter (and there was a recent poll on CBC.ca that reported around 45% of respondents were in favour of actually banning cycling in the winter, if you can believe it). Own it. Take up that lane. You'll feel better, and you'll be safer.

Seriously

As I was leaving my apartment complex's recreation centre this evening, a man going by saw me unlocking my bike from a tree, putting it on the pavement and switching on the lights. "You still riding?" he asked.

"Well, yeah!" I answered.

"Seriously?" (He said, incredulously.)

"Definitely!" (I said, brightly.) "All year."

What I didn't say, and thought of about three seconds later:

No, in the winter I just take the bike out into the parking lot so it can pee.

Why it's so much harder in the cold

I rode down to a friend's place in Chinatown yesterday to go snowshoeing. Packed the snowshoes into the panniers and headed downtown. But it was sludgy, hard work. I got ice in my eyelashes and I kept getting my throat uncomfortably clogged because I was breathing hard and it was -30 out (or something like that). It just felt like I was towing a refrigerator (except without the welcome extra boost a refrigerator might have given me on the downhills). I kept checking to see if my back tire was flat, it was that hard to pedal. And by the time I got to my friend's place I was trembly-tired and my lungs were killing me. 

And, unfortunately, I'd been sweating, thereby soaking my wool base layer, which meant I started shivering as I cooled down in my friend's car on the way to Gatineau Park. (That is something to seriously, seriously think about when biking in the cold: when you stop, do you have a change of base clothes, or long enough inside to dry out before you have to go back outside again?) 

But, happily, I got myself nice and warm again pretty fast with a vigorous snowshoe up about 150m of vertical gain, then a moonwalking romp back down all the steepest bits.

Anyway. Why, oh why, I thought to myself, is it such hard work to bike in the cold? It's not just me: a friend of mine quit biking when it got really cold last year because it was such hard going. So I went out looking for answers. 

According to Lennard Zinn at Velo News, air resistance actually plays a part: as an aerodynamicist he consulted says, "Temperature has a much more pronounced effect on air density than humidity: cold air contains more molecules per cubic meter." Another points out that "The drag you experience at 25 degrees Fahrenheit is about 10-percent greater than you would experience at 75 degrees Fahrenheit. This is approximately equivalent to the difference between riding at 20 mph and increasing your speed to 21 mph." 

So at -40F? Eek. 

Add to that what I found out at Fit Werx: tire rolling resistance is lower in the cold, making your tires sludgy. "Tire rolling resistance measures how much energy it takes to roll your tires over the pavement. When a tire contacts the ground it deforms and then springs back to its original shape. Every time this happens energy is lost in the form of heat. A warmer tire has improved elasticity and will lose less energy during this contact with the pavement."

The folks at Icebike also agree with my friends' theory that colder grease & bearings will affect you as well, making it harder for the whole drive train to turn, thereby making you suffer. (And look! a website devoted to winter biking! Hooray!)

Then there's the psychology: the way your scarf and jacket and hood and hat and helmet all combine to make it more or less impossible to turn your head to shoulder check. The only turns you can manage look a bit like Michael Keaton's Batman: shoulders and neck and head as a single molded-plastic unit. That just adds to your feeling of clumsiness and lumbering. And there's the sore lungs (after a pretty high-activity day yesterday, my lungs still feel just slightly sore from all the work in the cold air).

But. BUT. I was riding back home from my friend's place yesterday, after dark, down Bank Street through the Glebe, and as I went past a cluster of bundled people standing at a bus stop, I heard one of them say, "Nice!" and threw him a grin. Sure, I had to downshift, a lot, to get up that mile-long hill before my house. But I felt pretty badass when I got home.

The year of circumstances (not being quite right)

I'm trying to do a new year's reflection on all my blogs: a sort of recap and recalibration.

But this year, circumstances have been such that I don't get on the bike as much as I did. I used to have a job five days a week that was about seven or eight miles away depending on the route you took, and I could ride there in the morning and ride home at night, and I spent a lot of time with my legs going and my eyes on the path in front of me, or my head up and my ears tuned for the cars.

This year, though, I've been driving three days a week to a job 40km out along the highway: not something I can bike to. Well, I could. Sure, I could. And would I ever be in amazing shape right now if I did. . . But it's a matter of time. I don't have that kind of time. If cycling was a fitness thing for me, if fitness was a lifestyle for me like it is for some, then sure. I know there are a lot of people that ride that far to and from work. But I just can't take that much time out of my day. (And, leaving that job at 7 or 8 at night would have me riding home in the dark all the time, along back roads in Quebec. No thanks.)

But, one thing I've learned because of that is how much I actually do enjoy riding when I can. I'm no longer just getting up and riding to work in the rain or the snow or the heat because that's how I have to get around: I'm relishing the chance to go downtown now on the bike. No searching for parking. No digging for change to pay for parking. No running out to feed the meter. No stopping for gas, no scraping off ice and brushing off snow and not being sure if the car will start because of the deep cold. The bike starts, no matter how cold. I can store it inside. It costs nothing to park and it never needs gas or wiper fluid.

This winter has been snowy (very snowy!) and cold: not the best conditions. But I still get out on the bike. I still relish the feeling of being one of the (growing number of) cyclists who just bundle up and get out there, and who try to explain to their friends why riding is actually warmer than walking, or taking the bus. And my long term job searching goals now include the nice-to-have of being within biking distance: because I know (for reals) now how important it is to me.

Beautiful icy night

The cold snap has really been amazing this winter. The snow came down and stayed - deep and fluffy - and for the last few days, temperatures have been in the effective -25 to -40C range. In fact, December came hurtling in on a wall of snow and hasn't really shown any signs of letting up on the full-on, good-old-fashioned Canadian weather.

It's great.

I haven't been on the bike nearly enough these last few months. Between a part time contract that's inaccessible by bike, another part time contract that is often more efficient if I do it from home, a bunch of personal commitments and pressure, and weird hours, I've found myself more and more having to use the car. And it's been driving me nuts. Then on some days when I could use the bike, there's been 15 cm of fresh snow down and nothing plowed yet, and I've been off the bike enough lately that I'm uncertain of my snow skills. It's been a pain.

But today I woke up and it was an effective -39C outside. I was supposed to take the car to the shop for some work, but when I tried to start it, it made a wheezing noise and rolled its nonexistent automotive eyes at me, as if to say, "Seriously? NOW?" (13-year-old diesel engines don't take kindly to subzero temperatures.)

So I rescheduled the appointment, called my employer and said I'd work from home, and settled in. But this evening I had a meeting to get to. Knowing the car wouldn't work made it that much easier to decide on the bike. I wheeled it out to the elevator and was surprised to realize I was actually a little excited. This was going to be, believe it or not, my first real snowy ride since the hammer came down at the start of the month. (That's how bad my bikelessness has been.)

The temperatures had soared to a balmy effective -25C. (-18 real temperature and a wind chill of -25.) There was dusty, sparkly snow falling. As I stood in the lobby tying my scarf and pulling on my mittens and turning on all my lights, a guy in his twenties came in the front door, saw me, and said, "Whoa, ride safe!"

"I plan to," I said, and then I got myself bundled up and carried the bike down the steps to the snowy pavement.

And it was probably the best ride I've had in months. It was so cold it was dry, with a thin layer of snow down on the streets that didn't affect traction at all: there was fine snow coming down. The streets were pretty empty, and the drivers that were out were taking it easy and going slowly, having been scared straight by all the black ice this morning, perhaps. They were giving me a wide berth, driving carefully and courteously, partly because with all this snow down I pretty much have to take up most of the right hand lane, and partly because they're aware of the treacherous conditions. I wish they drove like that all the time, it would be fantastic.

One advantage to all the driving I've been doing lately: I know what's going through a driver's mind when they come up behind a cyclist on a snowy night, and I've watched how other drivers act. It made me more certain that they weren't likely to buzz me or drive aggressively. I've watched a lot of my fellow drivers slow down and move into the other lane to pass cyclists in the snow.

And I also knew to have an enormous taillight and a turtle light on my helmet and a big headlight on the handlebars; because I have cursed at a distressingly large number of cyclists this winter who I've come across biking along on a snowy road, unlit and wearing black. Some of them have really scared me. So, I was lit up like a Christmas tree, and feeling pretty safe as a result. (Also, cyclists: please, please, please, my driver side can't stress this enough: get lights.)

I whooshed along to my meeting without a single slip, or slide, or startle, thoroughly enjoying myself with the cold and the snow and the dark and the self-powered swoosh, and realized part way there that I was actually almost too warm (with my merino base layer and my sweater and my Thinsulate mittens). On the way back, it was just as lovely: cars giving me space, the cold air on my face, my tires cutting along through the thin layer of snow on the street.

Why wouldn't you bike in the winter?

Sousveillance nation

Sousveillance (/suːˈveɪləns/ soo-vay-ləns; French pronunciation: ​[suvɛjɑ̃s]): most commonly defined as the recording of an activity by a participant in the activity typically by way of small wearable or portable personal technologies.

Lately I've started to realize just how many people are riding with cameras on their helmets or handlebars. Yesterday, my Twitter feed blew up over a video on YouTube of a cyclist being ticketed (back in June) for taking up the whole lane at a pinch point. (The #ottbike hashtag went a little nuts with tweets to and from pretty much every officially-tweeting Ottawa Police Service representative.)


The cyclist fought the ticket successfully, I assume because the city's own website says:

Cyclists are required to ride as close as possible to the right curb of the roadway, except when:

• Travelling at the normal speed of traffic
• Avoiding hazardous conditions
• The roadway is too narrow for a bicycle and a motor vehicle to travel safely side-by-side
• Tiding alongside another cyclist in a manner that does not impede the normal movement of traffic
• Preparing to make a left turn, passing another vehicle, or using a one-way street (in which case riding alongside the left curb is permitted) 

Well, I'd call that pretty clear. . . the first three are clearly demonstrated in this guy's video. He's going at the speed of traffic; the potholes are terrible; the road's too narrow to share.

Cyclists, increasingly, are getting cameras, and they're doing it to defend themselves, primarily, maybe with a side helping of educating the public. It's a lot like the dash cam situation in Russia, where because of insurance fraud and corrupt police - and because the courts prefer video evidence to eyewitness accounts - a huge number of drivers are recording everything that happens. Having a dash cam can actually lower your insurance premiums in Russia, I understand. (Bonus: you might get some truly crazy footage.)

Cyclists are in much the same position: if  you're nearly right-hooked, or passed too close by a heavy truck or a bus, or when you're given a ticket for taking the lane when there was reason to do so, it's way better to have evidence rather than your subjective opinion. I can't count the number of times someone's done something dangerous around me and it all happened too fast to identify the car or the plate number, and good luck catching up to a car to get that information. Then, if you actually want to make a complaint, you're stuck with how it felt to you, which isn't as concrete as camera footage.

So cyclists start recording. Some cameras record for a set amount of time, then loop, so you can 'set it and forget it,' and only pull the footage if something happens. You're just always recording, every time you roll out there onto the road. Clip on your helmet, kick your leg over, turn on your camera, and step on the pedals. It sounds a little crazy to me, but also like a recognition - that camera's part of your safety system, like your lights and bell and helmet.

YouTube channels like BikeViewCA are full of video clips demonstrating close calls, dangerous stretches of road, and confrontational drivers. (There are also clips showing beautiful days and exhilarating rides, but they're outnumbered.) And it's getting so that non-cyclists know about the cameras, too: there's this angry driver who sees the helmet cam and shouts, "Yeah, I hope you're getting this on camera!" at the cyclist while yelling her (faulty) convictions about the rules of the road.



I've thought about getting one myself. Today, watching the driver of a pickup truck towing a trailer have a complete meltdown because the person in the lane in front of him had stopped, third in line, at a red light, thereby blocking his access to the right turn he clearly desperately needed to make now now now - well, watching that, I thought again about pricing out GoPros. Sure, I want it so I can defend myself. Like the Russian drivers, we cyclists need to be proactive, we need to keep tabs, we (apparently) need to "sousveil."

But I'd also love to be able to share some of the gorgeous rides I've been on (and I admit I would also have fun taking it out rock climbing). I once biked with one hand and filmed a large chunk of my ride home along the Riverside Path with my iPhone, with the intention of someday making it into a video so my parents could see my awesome commute. (Still haven't done that; still might. I have the background tune all picked out.)