One more pop of biking weather

[dreamshark]

I wish I was one of those hardy bikers who soldiers on no matter what the weather, but sadly I am not. So last week, which was only slightly inclement, I only managed about 10% of my 20 mile weekly goal.

But today the sun came out and the sky was bright blue with puffy white clouds, so I decided to overlook the less than welcoming temperature and go for a ride around the lake.

Comments

[davidwilford]

Good for you! Erin and I went for a walk along the trail this afternoon in a county park with our dog Tucker, who ran more than enough for the two of us.

[quadong]

[thumbs up]. I have been biking far too little recently. I managed to go out for short rides yesterday and today.

[pameladean]

Good job! (That's a very pretty mask, too.)

It was agood day to get outside, but I'm revising a short story under a deadline, so I didn't go anywhere.

We're due for an entire additional week or really lovely weather, though.

P.

[dreamshark]

Usually I just bike with my Mask of the Day hanging around my neck, but today I actually wore it. It turns out that when it's only 52 degrees, biking in a face mask feels pretty good.

Also, this mask is the flagship of our new Halloween Mask Line, and I wanted to show it off.

[bibliofile]

It is a pretty fabulous fabric, with gilded bats!

Go you for all the biking. Fall is such a great time for it.

[dreamshark]

Thanks for noticing! I'm so pleased with how that experiment turned out. It's actually two layers of fabric: a very transparent black mesh with
silver bats sewed over a layer of dark cloth. The mesh fabric is a little bit stretchy and clings so tightly to the cloth beneath that you would never guess it wasn't a single fabric. It's my new favorite mask!

[laramie]

Did the cool weather become more tolerable after biking for a while? How many miles before body temp counteracts external temps?

[dreamshark]

Actually, 50 degrees is not all that cold when you are moving around. I keep seeing runners go by in shorts at those temps. It's mostly a matter of keeping hands and head warm. The mask actually does help with protecting the face from the chilly flow of air, and even more importantly for my asthma, protecting from inhaling chilly air.

I wore a velour shirt, a fleece vest, and a light nylon fishing shirt over the top as a sort of half-assed windbreaker. I did stop after a couple of blocks to dig my fingerless gloves out of the bike luggage. Other than that I was never cold, and had taken off the top layer by the time I got home.

[laramie]

I suspected a layer would have come off by the end of your ride. :D

I suppose I'll see how my asthma does with a mask when it gets really cold; masks do tend to impede my breathing in general.

[lydy]

I have been feeling slightly under the weather, and missed two days in a row, now. I also passed a meaningless but pleasing milestone. I have biked 500 miles this summer, 400 of them on Jasmine, the other 100 on an ebike. (I haven't factored in the Nice Ride rental rides, that's probably another 50 miles.)

Two nice things about wearing a mask when you cycle. Your mouth gets less dry (though the mask gets kinda damp and unpleasant) and you don't inhale bugs. As a general rule, I wear masks during the day when I cycle, but if I'm cycling after ten at night, I usually don't bother, as I don't come close to other people. I do keep one in my pocket, just in case.

Do you normally cycle in the mornings, or in the afternoons? I am not doing mornings, at the moment. Which lake do you cycle round? I've done Bde Maka Ska any number of times, and Lake of the Isle once. I've been wondering about Harriet, but I think to get there from here one must venture some pretty significant hills, and I am still very, very slow and bad on hills.

[dreamshark]

For me, "The Lake" means Harriet. It is 5 miles from my house around the lake and back. The lake path itself is dead flat, but of course you have to get down from whatever height your house is at to lake level. And back up, which is the problem. I would think that the altitude difference is about the same no matter which of the 3 lakes you are heading to. The path you want to take for Harriet is through Lyndale Farmstead. Outbound is trivial, because ultimately you are heading down. On the way back, I can build up a sufficient head of steam going down the valley in the middle of the park to make it up the other side without even hitting the lowest gear, although it took a little practice to get the gear shifting timed right. I cannot make it all the way up 40th Street between Dupont and Bryant - too steep. I have done in the past, but not this year.

When the weather was sultry I biked in the morning, stopping for breakfast at Bread and Pickle. Now that it's cold in the morning I am struggling to find a similar routine for afternoon. I find it hard to bike without some kind of goal (and breakfast is definitely a goal). I bike to the Kingfield Farmers Market on Sundays, but that's trivially close. Sometimes I bike to Lunds or the Wedge Coop. I might do that today.

Congratulations! 500 miles in a summer is quite a lot for casual biking. Not a meaningless milestone at all. My exciting odometer milestone this year was watching the numbers on my old Univega turn over from 5999.9 to 6000.

[carbonel]

Lydy and I were supposed to go biking on Friday, but it turned out that the rear tire on my bike was flat, and wouldn't hold air. Bah.

[dreamshark]

And rear tires are such a pain to change, with all those gears in the way.