In Which Winter Biking Presents Minor Challenges

Dec. 6--After flat tyre was repaired, I ride bike home in the afternoon. Pretty light at Cedar Lake.

Winter in Iowa: A warm November ended rather dramatically with a minor dusting of snow and the sudden shift to cold temperatures. Thanksgiving Day saw flurries in the morning, and the days after were cool.

But I’ve continued to roll across this planet, and I have enjoyed many rides. I have layers of clothes and warm boots that make riding possible in cold weather, although there have also been a couple of days where weather prevented my biking. One Monday, snow fell, and I don’t ride in snow. There was also a day, the day after the snow fell, I think, where the morning windchill made the world feel like 9 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. I used to say my threshold to stop biking was zero, although I think these days it may be 10 above. It’s certainly far above 9 below.

So, sometimes I don’t ride due to weather.

Dec. 2--Snow fell today so I drove. Bike rack where I usually park--no bide today!

And then there have been a few other mishaps, too. On Friday, Dec. 6, I started my ride to work on a cold morning, but I was fully bundled up. About 1.5 miles into the ride, I felt a feeling no biker wants—the bike was suddenly a bit wobbly and sluggish. I stopped and felt the tyres—yup, the front was very mushy. Clearly, it was losing air.

On long summer rides, I bring a spare tube on my road bike, but I wasn’t carrying one this day—and frankly it takes me so long to change a flat that it would have been a real pain on a ride to work. I do carry a pump and tried pumping it up, but it lost air again quickly—clearly, there was a puncture. And I was about 2 miles from work.

I was lucky to be bundled up as well as I was, and also that I was wearing winter boots. That was a much longer walk than I was used to, but at least my boots are better than biking shoes for a very long stroll.

I was a few minutes late to class that morning, which I hate, but I made it. I messaged my wife, and that afternoon she drove to campus to give me a ride home. We put the bike in the van and decided we might enjoy a late lunch together, so we drove down to New Bo, where I wheeled the bike over to Goldfinch Cyclery. They were willing to sell me two tubes, but suggested they could install one for $10—a very cheap labor cost to have any competent bike mechanic touch your vehicle, so I said “sure.”

My wife and I browsed a bit as the mechanic worked. I had lost a leg band the day before (minor mishaps is my theme on this post) and picked up some new ones. We paid for the repair, the two tubes and the leg bands, locked the bike in the van and went to NewBo Market for a nice lunch.

And then I rode my bike home, late in the afternoon. It was a pretty afternoon, temperature in the 40s, which makes it fairly warm. So the morning flat didn’t spoil the afternoon ride.

And Saturday, Dec. 7, I was planning a trip to see a musical at TCR with my wife, one of my daughters and a grandson, but I had a bit of time for a morning ride. Today was to be a particularly warm day, but I thought it was cold enough in the morning that the mountain bike trails off of the Boyson Road trail might be ridable, so I got the trusty old mountain bike The Fancy Beast out.

Dec. 7--Warn Saturday sun on Boyson Road Trail.

And the trail was slightly mushy at parts, but in general, the plan was OK. Except, when I took the more difficult of the two trails, there came a point where I startled a buck and stopped to take its picture. And when I got on the bike again, well, I couldn’t tell the trail from the deer paths through the woods, and I got quickly lost in the woods.

Minor mishaps, right? I don’t recommend deer paths for bike rides, by the way—I inadvertently ran that experiment and don’t recommend. But the track I followed led me back to the other bike trail, one that is both easier and more defined (I think because it gets more traffic).

Luckily, no further mishaps and no flats. The rest of the ride went well as the day warmed up. The past three days have been a return to warmer than usual weather, although a big chill is expected this week.

All in all, despite a few bumps in the road, winter riding in Iowa this year has been pretty good. As of Dec. 9, I have 65.49 miles for the month and 2,224.59 miles for the year—closing in on 3,000. In November, I rolled 184.89 miles.