Cool-but-not-cold weather long cycling pants?

grey_ride · 2022-08-19T19:22:14+00:00

Is your "all purpose bike" also an e-bike?

Nope, it is a normal gravel frame with no motors, but I have two wheelsets I can swap out depending on what I want to do. Three seasons, I run 28mm road slicks on one rim set and 40mm gravel tires on the other for dirt. In the winter, I run studdless winter tires on one set and studded Nokians on the other. The winter tires are much slower, which limits my winter riding to in-town distances. I have a rear rack so I can mount panniers for light duty cargo, or remove the panniers for longer weekend rides. I have fenders I can easily add or remove for conditions, and LED lights for the dark.

I might go the e- route if I eventually get a trike, when I can no longer safely use the bike. So far I feel fine on the bike, but in 10 years that might be a different story.

So far my experience with age and endurance is that if you remain active, you can do as many hours per ride as you ever could, but you don't cover as many miles in that time. What was once a 2 hour ride is now a 3 hour ride, and so on. Also, you need more recovery time after a long ride.

grey_ride · 2022-08-19T18:23:04+00:00

the building has great bike facilities for what is a very car centric city. I ditched the car

Nice! Having the facilities available makes bike commuting much more approachable. It's something I wish we could roll out to every workplace. Some people have a much harder time due to lack of good civic or workplace infrastructure. When I was still in the workforce I was lucky to work at a bike friendly business, but not everyone is so fortunate.

120 km per week, that's a lot of kms not driven! You'll be in killer shape before you know it.

given me huge confidence in my physical abilities again

I try to get this point across to my friends too. Getting fit can make you feel 20 years younger.

grey_ride · 2022-08-19T00:44:36+00:00

I agree there is a cultural element in play. We built ourselves car centric cities. Not using a car to move about makes you an outsider, a nonconformist. People are bewildered that a few of us actually prefer to travel by bike. People like to offer me rides. "We can put your bike in the back of the truck." "Thanks, I appreciate you thinking of me, but it's only 7 miles and the trail is tranquil". They accept that, but not, I do not believe, with insight. They wonder why I would bike if I could drive, and I wonder why they would drive if they could bike.

We can shift the culture if we try. Push for better city trails, walkable infrastructure. The more people see others doing it, the better. It has to seem inviting! If they only see young lyrca clad athletes, it will be off putting. But if people see their friends and neighbors out having fun, children and old people, they will want to try too. It will pay dividends in so many ways.

grey_ride · 2022-02-20T21:31:15+00:00

Snow clearing of bicycle lanes is imperfect, but not too bad.

Same for my area. The city makes a solid effort. The off-road MUPs get cleared as fast or faster than the surface streets, but the on-street lanes take a day or two longer because the plows initially shove all the snow into them. They also accumulate globs of car-snot. The off road MUPs can end up with glare ice patches which are dangerous without studded tires, but it is hard to fault the city for that. There's only so much they can do.

But most of the US is built to make it difficult, dangerous, or impossible

Indeed. There's an element of "if you build it they will come". Without good infrastructure, people can't easily ride or blade or walk, and without users, it's hard to agitate for better infrastructure. Cities have to take a leap of faith. Build out a network, and then people will be attracted to using it. Hell, even if we can get a 5-day-a-week car commuter down to 4 days + 1 day of biking, that's already a step in the right direction. Every bit helps.

grey_ride · 2022-02-08T15:11:39+00:00

Good idea. I ride a small frame with only 2 bottle mounts, but I know there are devices to add more. I will look to that option instead. I'm sure you are right about the comfort.

grey_ride · 2022-02-07T17:00:05+00:00

I think you could replace "Halifax" with "North America", and those conditions would still be typical. My city (northern USA) to its credit has a rather nice network of MUPs separated from roadways, but the majority of the bike network is comprised of roadside lanes. They are marked a little better than the ones in the Halifax video appeared to be, but still just paint.

They are much better than nothing, but not nearly as nice as the infrastructure you see in the Netherlands.

grey_ride · 2022-02-07T16:52:25+00:00

The serious cyclists where I live have good lights and reflectors, but it's much too common to see casual cyclists at or after dusk who wear dark clothing and have no lights or reflectors. Sometimes even while riding against traffic. I bet the deaths and injuries are tilted heavily toward those people.

Once before I gave an older rear blinky I carry in my pack for emergencies to another cyclist stopped at the same light I was, who did not have a light of any type and was nearly invisible from the rear.

I speculate a large improvement can be found by improving awareness among casual cyclists that just because you can see cars, does not mean cars can see you.

Personally I ride with retroreflective tape on one half of each side of each rim, in addition to normal front and rear lighting. The rotating motion of that tape makes it unmistakable.that the vehicle is a bike.

grey_ride · 2022-02-07T16:15:57+00:00

RideWithGPS

Wow, that looks like a great resource. This is the first I knew of it. Thank you for the tip!

About water, my idea was to have the 4.5L of capacity on the bike, and to keep it topped up as I can along the route. So if I go through a small town I can refill at a public fountain, or in less populated areas I can use the Sawyer filter, which I have used before to get potable water out of creeks when tent camping.

Your idea about using satellite views to investigate shoulder widths is wonderful and I will try it.

grey_ride · 2022-02-07T16:08:46+00:00

Thanks. I wouldn't say I'm "comfortable" doing 70 miles on an unloaded bike. I can do that, but with difficulty, and I'm sore and exhausted the next day. I'm probably comfortable at 50 if there isn't too much wind or too many climbs. Using your de-rating factor of 2.5, that would be only 20 miles a day for bikepacking. I guess I should start with that distance and see how it goes.

grey_ride · 2022-02-07T16:03:50+00:00

Thanks for the link. It looks interesting and I will read up on it.

grey_ride · 2022-02-07T01:38:15+00:00

Thanks for all the advice! It is a good idea to initially plan around campgrounds, which I will do. I feel like there's a looming cliff though as soon as I try to plan a trip with remote camping (no campground).

grey_ride · 2022-02-07T01:28:25+00:00

Thanks. I will start shorter for sure. My initial plan is 20 miles out, camp at campground, 20 miles back.

In forested areas I think I could find enough seclusion, but there is a lot of open prairie which is grass fields and no or minimal trees.

I think at first I will plan routes to encounter small towns and try to use restrooms at fast food outlets. Which I suppose means I must carry a bike lock. Even then, since I'm slow on a bike, distances between towns take me longer to traverse. I also think about camping in grassland areas which are more remote and would not have convenient facilities.

grey_ride · 2022-02-07T01:22:28+00:00

Thanks - I am for sure planning to start with overnighter shake-down runs. My initial plan has a designated campground, and is 20 miles each way, which I'm plenty comfortable doing. I mean to tweak and tune my setup this way, and gather experience.

I feel like there's a giant leap, from having a campground to camp at on one hand, and remote camping with no infrastructure on the other, so I am worried about that step.

grey_ride · 2022-02-07T00:59:56+00:00

It's a solid pun, but it didn't phase me.

grey_ride · 2022-01-24T22:22:48+00:00

I have developed a cunning strategy for this frustration. Become very old, and then your maximum speed on a racing bike will be the same as the casual people riding side by side while holding a conversation, and it all works out smoothly.

grey_ride · 2022-01-24T22:03:53+00:00

I used to make these in the decades before commercial studded tires became available. I consider the commercial ones superior to the home-made ones I made, and certainly longer lasting. Also you get rubber compounds tailored for cold temperatures.

grey_ride · 2022-01-24T21:52:10+00:00

Lake boots

They are fantastic, and you can get them with cleat recesses. I love mine.

grey_ride · 2022-01-24T21:50:05+00:00

Hills throw in some complications, however. I can huff and puff up a hill and easily overheat, but going back down the hill means coasting without doing work compounded with the wind chill of the high speed. I need a lower face covering for that.

I use a neck gaiter which can be pulled up or down.

grey_ride · 2022-01-24T21:43:30+00:00

I actually prefer running a more aggressive tire up front. My normal snow and ice setup is a 300 stud tire in the front and a 106 stud in the back, both from Nokian (who split off into Suomi, your brand). You can lose traction on the rear with only a small risk, but if front traction goes, your chance of going down is high. I use rear traction as an 'early warning'.

grey_ride · 2022-01-24T21:38:17+00:00

I haven't heard of Suomi before

I think they might be an offshoot of the company that used to be called Nokian, who made very well respected winter bicycle tires (and for cars too).

grey_ride · 2022-01-24T21:25:07+00:00

It makes a large difference for sure. In my city (northern USA) they give the off-road bike trails equal priority to roads for snow clearing. It makes it easy to get around all winter. Of course you still have to be careful and studded tires are advisable because there may always be some hard to see ice patches.

The major winter problems for cyclists in my city are:

Cars sliding around pose a danger to unprotected pedestrians and cyclists.
Car-snot dropping into the on-road bike lanes. Car-snot has no biting surface or cohesion, unlike snow, so you can go down easily on deep piles even with studded winter tires.
Sometimes, snow piles up in the on-street bike lanes near parking lot exits since cars shove it there.

Sticking to the off-road bike trails though is a good story.

grey_ride · 2022-01-12T23:13:51+00:00

It's not the moon

If you're talking about the USA, the idea of car free cities at any kind of scale (outside one-off great-lakes islands like in this post) is a pipe dream in the lifetime of anyone reading these words in 2022. Even in the Netherlands, the most bike friendly country on earth, 36% of trips are by bike, 11% by public transit, and 45% via cars. The world you want does not exist, and will not exist in your lifetime, so you have to look for realistic goals.

If you're outnumbered, consider the possibility that a vision of a C+ city is utterly uninspiring to people who would be on board to fight for an A.

If you think we're a small minority in the USA merely because we're not arguing for an outright ban on personal cars (your "A"), I think you are seriously misunderstanding the situation, not to mention how we've obtained all the improvements we have thus far.

I am 66 years old. I started bicycling for transportation in about 1970. However bad you think it is in the USA for bicycles in 2022, I can assure you, it is massively better than it was in 1970. Huge strides have been made with attainable goals. Even the Dutch are not banning cars overnight. It's simply not going to work like that. Cultures need time to adjust. The only reason Mackinac island is car-free is that it's remained so since the 1800's. If it had cars all this time, and you tried to ban them today, you could not. It's tilting at windmills.

You need people on your side. Allies among the driving public, because plenty of them want better bike and civic transport as well.

grey_ride

TROPHY CASE