What Happens When Wearing a Rain Poncho While Riding A Bicycle?

I don't mind riding in the rain as long as it is not cold; so when the weather finally warmed up again and the snow melted it was time to get back into my routine of bicycle riding.  It was spring, and it was raining but it was warm.

The rain was not heavy, so I put my backpack in a plastic bag and strapped it to the bike rack; then I put on my poncho, which I bought at a grocery store last year, and set off.  I do not have a lot of money for fancy high-tech equipment so I make do with the department store stuff and get creative, and this poncho is proof that you can be O.K. with the low-tech stuff.

The problem with ponchos is that the wind pushes them up while you ride and they wrap around your shoulders leaving the rest of your body exposed, so I tried an experiment- I used binder clips to clip the poncho to the bike in front, (binder clips are those stiff boxy triangle black metal ones). The clips were strong enough to hold it down.  I had to wrap the part of the poncho that I wanted to secure around something like the handlebar, the neck or the cross tube and then bunch the edge of the poncho and clip it together.  I tried to clip the poncho to the handle bars but felt it was restricting my movement so I tried to clip it to the cross tube.

 It worked well enough and I think with a few more attempts I will be much more dryer when I get to work. I think that if I clip it tightly around my wrist I might have part of the problem solved.

The binder clips and poncho came in handy when I arrived at work.  I locked up my bike and lay the poncho over it then used the binder clips to hold it on.  The bike was nice and dry when I came out after work.

I plan to always carry a few binder clips or clothes pins in my backpack from now on.

How I Prepare for Bicycling In Extreme Cold

The other day the temperature was about 30 degrees with a wind chill in the single digits. Since my son had the car I had no option but to bicycle the seven miles to work.I know there is some high tech gear for cold weather riding but I am just the mail room guy and can't afford the good stuff.

I had already bought some gloves for my hands since it had been getting colder day by day. In this cold, the knit gloves would not be nearly enough so I tied some grocery bags over my hands to break the wind. I put on a sweatshirt over my long sleeved undershirt and a windbreaker over that. I put on a pair of nylon shell pants over my sweat pants.

I thought with these precautions I would be able to face the challenge of the cold. After putting plastic bags over my gloves I found that I couldn't snap on my helmet and had to take the gloves off, put my helmet on and then start over with the gloves and bags.

I know these measures helped but not so much as I had hoped. My mouth, nose, and throat hurt from the cold. When I arrived at work my fingers were stinging and my feet were in pain from the cold.  I ran cold water in the sink and put my numb hands in; my hands were so cold that the water felt like it was burning. It took about a half hour to change into my work clothes.

The next day was even colder. This time I found some large gloves and slipped them on over my knit gloves then put the plastic grocery bags over them. I put on two pairs of socks and then tied grocery bags over my shoes. I put on two pairs of sweats and nylon pants over them. I added a jacket over the windbreaker and a ski cap under my helmet. Last I wrapped a scarf around my nose, mouth, and throat.

Bundled up I was ready for anything. The cold was still bitter and my eyes watered badly. With two gloves and grocery bags over my hands, I couldn't push my glasses back up my nose and they kept slipping lower and lower until I had to stop, take off the bags, and gloves to push them back in place then reassemble the gloves and bags on my hands. That was the only real problem I had, the layers worked.

It took a lot longer to get ready but it was worth it I was much more comfortable even if all those shopping bags made me look homeless.

How Traffic Rhythims Affect The Quality Of Bicycling To Work

I never considered that traffic patterns could have such a major effect on the enjoyment and safety of bicycling to work, until I was late to work and saw different activities on the road.

I try to leave for work with enough time to cope with all the challenges of bicycling, but if I leave on time there is heavy traffic. A lot of cars compete to make the left turn at the second light I come to and then the cars bunch up behind me on the boulevard. I slowly negotiate left turns across lanes among cars. I pass several schools where the moms are crowding the curb to get into the parking lot.  There is a contractor's oversize van parked in my way as I come down a hill. The last half mile is fraught with speeding people late for work.

If I leave for work fifteen minutes early the patters are different. The school where the kids are being dropped off is quiet and only a few cars are there. Traffic is light at the mini mart. The left hand turns are easier nice since there are fewer cars on the road. The last half mile is a relaxing wind down on an almost empty road.

I do not often have the leisure to leave early. A few times I have been late and it was better than early since the traffic pattern was even lighter than the normal times. I could ride in the center of the lane without the worry of cars passing inches to my left, or bunching up behind me. I could drift across lanes and make a left turn without looking over my shoulder the whole way. The moms were gone now that they were done dropping kids off to school. The contractor's van had already left giving me a clear passage down the hill. The last half mile was the relaxing dream that bicycling to work should be.

It felt much safer to not have to concentrate on the traffic.

I do not have the liberty to make my own hours but if I did I would opt for the later commute which is more enjoyable. 

Bicycle Riding is Good For Depression.

Those closest to me know I have a struggle with depression. A slight word could send me into a dark mood with negative thoughts for days. Sometimes I don't know why but I get depressed and go for long walks at night and spend hours feeling sorry for myself and reliving every failure I ever experienced.

I do not know the science behind it but exercise seems to help, and riding a bike, in particular, seems to lift my mood. Maybe it is the chemicals in the brain that start to flow, or maybe it is the pounding of the heart that makes the body go into overdrive, I do not know exactly but something positive happens when I bicycle to work.

Forget all the neurological biological science stuff it is hard to feel down when you are dodging potholes, avoiding cars, grinding through gears up a hill, and trying to get through an intersection before the cement mixer rolls over you. There is just no freedom to think depressing thoughts because you are focused on getting to work without a visit to the ER on the way.

Driving is lazy on the brain. You can drive a car without thinking about it and so you spend your time thinking gloomy stuff; especially if the radio is playing some country or other sad music. Then you just drift to work while thinking sorry dark thoughts.

Driving a car to work is no big thing;but if you bicycle to work you have accomplished something before you even punch the time-clock. People are impressed and over time you become a legend. It is hard to be depressed when you are a legend.

Bicycling to work is not a cure for depression but for me it helps and enough things that help can make a big difference overall. 

What Happens On The First Ride Of The Season?

The snow and cold has forbidden me to ride since November. Others can bicycle in the sub-freezing temperatures but I grew up in sunny California; I do not have the thick blood required to suck in polar air without getting frostbite in my lungs.  I have witnessed those with more severe constitutions bicycling in the freeze of winter and it causes me to wonder at their iron nerve and concrete resistance to glacial cold.

The worst winter in memory is coming to a defiant end. With the warmer weather I am feeling the call to return to my morals and ride the bike to work again. Today I lugged the poor thing up from its exile between the laundry machine and the hot water heater in the dusty dank basement. It looked unhappy to have been in social quarantine for three months.

A quick inspection confirmed that the mice had not chewed through the rims or that the cables had not become bunched up around the sprocket on their own. I ignored the cobwebs and began turning the crank. It still turned and the wheels still looked reasonably round and true. That was all I needed. I found my helmet next to the kitty box, (what the kitty was doing with it I thought was a matter best left alone- cats can be so condescending).

Today would be a shakedown ride, about half way to work and then back just to make sure things were OK.

My normal route was up the sidewalk and across a short grassy stretch to a path. The first surprise was that the grassy stretch was a quagmire of mud and soggy soil; I sank beyond the rims and had to stand on the cranks and fought to keep forward momentum. I envisioned sinking between the buildings and not being found until sometime past the next millennium.

Next was a gentle incline that memory told me was an ideal warm up for my daily ride. Memory is faulty. I strained and panted all the way up. It seemed some convulsion of seismic activity turned the gentle incline to an alpine slope, after all I couldn't be that out of shape!

I found my stride after emerging onto the road behind my townhouse and began to enjoy my ride. The day was crisp with a winter nip left in the air. I made a mental note to wear my windbreaker tomorrow morning. I coasted behind the neighborhood swim center and raced a squirrel for a dozen yards until it climbed a tree.

The old bike seemed to be OK. I noticed a few squeaks in the chain and decided to give it a good oiling when I got home. The front break cable seemed a little soft but I remembered rebuilding the front break and having to tweak it some, so it the mushy response made sense, I would have to live with it until I get a new one. The left gear shifter still had a rough feel to it. I had hoped a season of convalesce would have caused the bike to return to its old self but it seemed the bike still needed my loving attention.

I had been on city streets and chose to return home on back roads and paths. Once off the street onto the quiet woody paths the peace and quiet began to charm me. I remembered this was the best part of riding home from work- the tranquil time silently coasting through woods, where there was no one talking to you, no demands, and no time to think about the mess back at work, just ride the bike. It was a time alone with mental activity turned down and life turned up. I felt it was too long a season that I neglected such a peaceful relaxing practice.

The first ride of the year made me realized how much I had missed the bike riding every day; I missed not only the exercise but the spiritual and emotional benefit of it. 

What Can Happen When You Bicycle to Work On County Road 108.

Riding a bicycle to work every day can be wonderful or it can be stinky, I mean really stinky.

Recently my work place had a one day relocation to a church building that was outside town. It was nice for me since it was less than half the distance I normally ride and because it was down a beautiful county road with sheep pastures on one side and shady trees all around.

It was a beautiful day the weather was warm the sky was blue with white clouds drifting idly above. A soft breeze delivered rusty and golden leaves from the rustling branches to the earth. The sheep were busy doing nothing in the field and the farms had the gratified sleepy look of a good harvest. I admired the rolling hills on one side and enjoyed the trees with their cooling shade and autumn colors.

This country road turned out to be a sort of expressway that short cut between two freeways without going through town so there was a lot of traffic. There was no shoulder but being experienced with cars zooming past at freeway speed inches way I just dealt with it and kept on going.

A truck passed belching diesel fumes in a faint black haze. There were other commercial vehicles with thick exhaust escaping at every seam and gasket. The smell made me sick to my stomach.  The harder I tried to get home the harder I was panting and sucking in the poison of angry combustion engines. One vehicle would speed by trying to outrun its exhaust of corrosive carbon gas and another would follow with thick smelling diesel that left a burnt rubber flavor in my mouth. The smell mixed with the acrid odor of burning oil and hot tires to create a stew of stink. I felt that I had wandered into a chemical warfare test zone utterly out of character with the beautiful landscape I was passing through.

Thankfully I turned to the shady suburban road that leads directly home. I wanted to raid my wife's garden of rose petals and shove them crumpled into my nose to try to get the stink out, but instead chose a soapy shower which did wonders.

I was disappointed that a pleasant ride turned rancid but the experience has reminded me of the great need to make alternative choices that will help conserve our world. I am not the victim of the exhaust fumes that day any more than any other day because every day all the residents of my community called planet earth suffer. We should all take a moment and smell the roses but if they are covered with carbon exhaust we can.t and should consider what we can do to conserve God's gift of planet earth.

How to Try To Keep Your Feet Dry While Bicycling In The Rain.

A little rain is no reason to abandon a bicycle ride to work if you take a few creative measures.

Everybody has a different reaction to the cold and wet; and for me if my feet are wet I just can't stand it.

There are fancy equipment to keep you dry; but I am poor so I go with the low technology- grocery bags.

Before I started out I put plastic bags inside my shoes so my feet would stay dry. I tied them above my ankle and tucked the tops inside my sweat pants. This seemed to work for about five miles which was about twenty minutes for me, but for some reason my feet were getting wet. When I arrived at work water was squishing between my toes and when I took off my shoes I found about a gallon of water was in each shoe. I changed my socks for the dry ones I brought but made the mistake of putting my soaking shoes back on. The socks were immediately saturated and my feet were just a wet as before. They had to be a little dryer but I couldn't say if it was by much.

Work had to be done so I put up with cold wet feet while everybody else was comfortable.

Going home I didn't bother to try the plastic shopping bags, I just suffered with wet feet. The shoes spent about an hour in the laundry dryer that evening.

In the future I will consider shopping bags inside my shoes and on the outside. I will bring not only a change of dry socks but a change of shoes or slippers to wear at work.

When My Bicycle Beat the Bus

My bike had a flat tire just as I was getting ready to go to work. I couldn't find the leak and didn't have time to fiddle with it. So I had to rely on public transit also known as the bus

Looking at my watch told me it was a little after three, normally I could leave around 3:10 pm and be at work by about 3:50 pm, a trip of roughly 35 or 45 minutes. Walking five minutes took me to the bus stop where people were camped out waiting for the green bus to arrive. "When does the bus come?" I asked someone who looked sober and English speaking. "It is late." I am afraid I did not receive this information well, but as uncertainties began to haunt my mind a distant rumble warned of an approaching bus. It stopped at the cub and I witnessed with concern as people flung themselves from it in gratitude as they sought the safety of immovable soil. I wondered why so few of those who had been waiting for the bus stood still not getting on. Braving my safety I put my head gingerly inside the folding door contraption and asked if he was going to, Kings Contrivance shopping center.  "Nope you want the green bus, it takes you to the mall where you catch the brown bus to Kings Contrivance. I am going to Laurel." "When will the green arrive?" I asked. "It's late." The driver said. I returned to the spot where I wait trying to look like I belonged. The smell of the cigarette smokers was really bothering me. They were standing in a small group creating a white cancerous cloud that drifted my way.

At last the rumbling grinding noise of the green bus could be heard. It remained far away for a long time. Everyone was watching as it came a few feet and then stopped and then it sputtered forward a few more feet and stopped again. At last the driver found his mark and stopped at last a mere twenty feet away. The riders took the last puffs of cigarette and looked the bus over. With dubious confidence we climbed the steps. It was already 3:30 and I was just getting on the bus.

The bus wound its way through neighborhoods for no apparent reason. On occasion it would stop and pick up a passenger or let one off. The distance from the shopping center to the hub where I would catch the next bus was about two miles in a straight line on a map. In the world of bus transit there is no such thing as a straight line and the meandering route clocked at least twice that. In only twenty five minutes the bus arrived at the mall where all the buses in town meet for donuts and cigarettes. Any who were left on the bus departed to wait in a row of acrylic bench filled huts that lined the sidewalk.  The apparent policy is that having discharged its passengers the bus would rolled forward to a little convention where the bus drivers stood around taking the union mandated fifteen minute brake. I wonder if they don't get one break an hour.

I checked the charts and maps posted on the acrylic huts to determine when the next bus would depart to my hopeful destination. It was my expectation that the bus system ran frequent and convenient routs. The truth of the matter was that the buses depart hourly. My next bus, the brown, would depart in about an hour! I would be late for work before I even got on the bus. For an hour I sat and watched the clouds drift by in the sky, the cars roll up the street, the other would be passengers smoke more cigarettes and the kids scream while they play in the sidewalk.

At long last the brown bus arrived. I was about to leap on when the driver advised me that he would be leaving in fifteen minutes after his break. My blood pressure was about to give me an aneurysm the time was almost five o:clock.

Finally after a long fifteen minutes the driver admitted us unfortunates and began his rumble around town. If one was to draw a straight line from the bus hub to the shopping center it would have measured about four miles but those politicians and city planners who design bus routes are not knowledgeable of straight lines. On this bus ride I saw parts of town I never knew existed and never want to see again. We rolled back and forth; one stop was in a random parking lot of a hotel, one stop was in front of a clinic and later the bus returned to stop on the other side of the clinic. It went up a street to make a stop that was a five minute walk from the shopping center where I caught the green bus. It meandered to a construction site, a cemetery and a church, (this I did not understand since it was Wednesday and this church had no services on Wednesday, besides which the bus doesn't run on Sunday when the church does have services). At one stop the bus parked for five minutes because apparently it had as spasm of efficiency and was ahead of schedule. The bus went one way up an industrial park and then back down the other side of the street in the same industrial park. At last I could see the shopping center where I worked at a grocery store. My blood pressure was begging to return to safe levels when the bus turned and went up another side street to wait a minute across the street from the fire station- perhaps the firemen take the bus to fight fires? The bus made another stop at a school then at last pulled into the back parking lot of the shopping center; where the driver parked at a pole marked with a sign that said brown.

The exhausted passengers leapt to safety, relieved to arrive before daylight savings time.  A look at my watch told the time to be 5:50. I was almost two hours late. Taking the bus took almost two and a half hours when I could have ridden my bicycle to work in less than forty minutes. I really have to fix the tire on my bike.

Bicycle to Work And The Third Day Crash

I rode my bicycle to work every day this week, but  the third day was the hardest. Possibly the accumulation of fatigue and muscle wear collided with mental ineptitude causing and effect I termed the third day crash.

The third day ride to work was longer than the first two. My legs were sore and my knees felt as if the were going to explode and geyser blood skyward.  The hills seemed to grow to alpine altitudes as I stood on the peddles trying to crank my way up zig-zaging against the incline. I fumbled through gears which never seemed to get correct. The worst was my mind seemed to be fuzzy and the choices that came out of my decision making was idiotic, comical and dangerous.

On my job I stand at a cash register all day. On one hand I think it gave me some endurance and conditioning to add bicycling to my routine; on the other hand it was torturous to stand on fatigued legs that felt as if they were slowly being liquidized in a blender full of nails.   My shoulders and arms ached in sympathy to my abused legs.

The ride home felt like it took two weeks. Every turn of the crank caused me to gasp for breath partly for need of oxygen and partly because of the two alarm fires in my legs. For some reason the landscape seemed to evolve more hills going home. I had to stop at every intersection and struggle back up to a snails crawl. I tried some shortcuts across a parking lot and a grassy meridian; they were bad choices since I had to lift my bike over curbs, (where is a forklift when you need one), and the grass was softer than quicksand from which I barely escaped to the other side.

Fortunately I had Thursday off which I spent semi comatose as a walking zombie going through the motions of housework and errands. All day I fought the feeling that I was about to fall asleep any moment. For some reason planetary gravity had increased five-fold, because it took herculean effort to lift the coffee cup to my quivering lips. I gave in and like some centuries old geezer and fell asleep in the rocking chair with a heating pad on my thighs. (Heating pads are wonderful things and much better than stuffing furry cats between aching muscles and your clothing).

I refuse to pay that much for gas.

During my day of rest I debated privately in my mind if I was going to continue to ride my bike every day to work. One errand caused me to drive my 1987 not so trusty Chrysler Reliant K to a spot down the freeway. It needed gas coming back and as I was about to sign a second mortgage to pay for it, the thought came to me that what I spent for that tank of gas took me a day to earn at my job, and felt rage at the legal pick pocketing I was experiencing. The gas was in the tank so I couldn't give it back. The only alternative to riding a bike every day is to learn how to distill some kind of of white lighting to feed the tank of the tired old Chrysler, but my wife is always fussing about how I put paper shreds in the blender to make my own note paper, I could imagine she would have a herd of cows if I started to distill ethanol in the basement. (Could it really be that hard?). So I will ride my bike every day to work.