Cold weather biking

I had my coldest commute this morning to work. It was 40 degrees Fahrenheit, and with a few minor discomforts it was a pretty decent ride.

You see, I started my bicycling career last year, thanks to my good friend and fellow bicycling mad-man, Art (http://www.finelinefurniture.us). He built me a really cool bike - a fixed gear road bike. If you are not familiar with fixed-gear bicycles, check out the Fixed Gear Gallery. It's a very cool site if you are into bikes, and it will give you a lot of info, not to mention lots of pictures of fixed-gear bikes.

The cool thing about fixies is that they are project bikes the way we do them. You buy yourself a good steel-framed bike in a garage sale (Art tells me that you should only pay $1 for any garage-sale bike) and then you modify it to remove the free-wheel function by removing the gear cassette and lock-tighting the cog on the rear wheel. Then, as you break parts or grow in appreciation of finer parts, you add on. It's economical, and exceptionally cool to be different.

So what I learned today in the 40-degree weather is that I could stand to use some long biking pants. Curently I wear longer shorts, and while that wasn't all bad it would be nice to have a decent pair of riding pants. I also learned that a t-shirt, a long-sleeve shirt and a wind-breaker jacket is more than adequate for upper-body warmth. I wear a backpack with my work clothes right now, and that helped with the warmth factor, I'm sure. I also could have used some decent riding gloves that are designed more for keeping warm than the fabric gloves I wear now. But none of that is needed before the end of the season, which I anticipate to be sometime in October.

Bike commuting to work is great for all sorts of reasons.

1. I work about 5 miles from home. In my piece-of-junk truck, that costs me about a gallon of gas a day. That comes out to $50/month only in getting to and from work, $100/month when I go home for lunch every day (which I do).
2. It's good for my health, and good for your health, too. I'm no longer adding to the toxic waste that chokes the very life from you in the air you breathe
3. It's good for my pocketbook. I am not only saving the $100/month in gas, but my insurance bill has been cut in half (that's right...I took the plunge and canceled the insurance on my piece-of-junk truck)
4. It's good therapy to pedal home after a stressful day in the office, so it's prolonging my life (and saving me money on a shrink)
   

I'm sure I'll come up with many more ideas, and you'll read about them here. Thanks for staying until the end of this post...more things as they happen...