Freezing My A** Off!

The temperature is below my usual minimum of 21 degrees, but crazy person that I am, I've decided to go biking. There's no snow on the roads, the roads are dry, and there's a weak winter sun trying to break through the clouds and warm things up a little bit. I want to go to the Squirrel Hill branch of the Carnegie Library to do some work (free wifi is you have a library card). Since we trying to be more green and use the car less, I decided to try biking.

I have a fleece jersey with a windbreaker, long cycling tights, and cold-weather cycling gloves. I borrowed my wife's hoodie/dickie thing to keep my ears and face warm, and figured I was all set...

One of the problems with cold weather riding is that it is hard to judge whether you are dressing warm enough. When you first go outside, you have to expect to be cold, because you haven't been pedaling and generating any heat. If you dress so that you are warm enough when you first go outside, then you are going to be too warm once you have been riding for a little bit. The other problem you have is wind chill. when you ride, your getting hit with the equivalent of a wind with the same spped as you're traveling on the bike.

The ride to the library actually wasn't too bad. Because most of it is uphill, I was going slower and pedaling harder, which generated more heat. The trip back was another story. After 3 hours at the library I got back on the bike. I wasn't heated up, and the rride back on Forbes Avenue was almost all downhill at a 20 to 25 mph pace. It was COLD! I found out my windbreaker didn't. And thin tights didn't do much to hold in the heat. I was shivering by the time I got to the end of Forbes, and actually grateful that I had to pedal through Wilkinsburg and Edgewood to get home.