Contrary to
popular belief, it does get cold here in the winter. Oh, I don’t mean cold like Alaska-cold. We were in the interior of Alaska in the fall
of ’10 and we met a local woman who told us about her son who rides his bike
until the temperature gets down around 30 below. 30 below!!!
And then she said the problem isn’t so much that he can’t stay warm,
it’s that the air in the tires starts to act funny and the bike doesn’t perform
like it should. Well, I don’t know what
they wear in Alaska in the wintertime, but it’s clearly different from what we
wear because around here even 30 above is way too cold to ride. And it does get down into the 30s every now
and then—like today for example.
Now
obviously, temperature is one of those things that is very relative. For example, when I was riding by myself a
lot, I had set the mid-50s as my minimum riding temperature. Anything colder than that, and I wouldn’t
ride. But on one of those fluke cold
days this past November Brenda went out with one of the local riding clubs when
it was in the mid 40’s. So there it is—a
new standard. And wouldn’t you know it,
one day over this past Christmas break, on the morning of a nice club ride, the
temperature in the morning was in the mid 40’s.
For her, this was a no-brainer—without thinking twice about it she was
ready to get up at 6:00 in the morning, get everything ready, put the bike on
the car, and drive out to the meeting place to do this ride. For me?
Well… Ok, but I couldn’t let her
go out there by herself—after all, I’m the domestique. So there I was on a non-work day, rolling out
of a perfectly warm bed to go out and ride in weather that was 10 degrees below
my (previous) minimum. Like Huey Lewis
says, it’s the power of love…
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