Perfectly Comfortable

I don't particularly like cars. I don'tlike the way they smell, on the inside or the outside. I don't likethe feeling of being trapped in a sheet metal-and-vinyl box, my bodyslowly warping to the shape of a bucket seat. I don't enjoy thevisually unexciting and inhospitable environment of highways or theboredom of spending hours gazing at asphalt markings and highwaysigns. I particularly dislike the insect-like behavior that carsprovoke in people, reducing their behavioral repertoire to that ofants who follow each other around, their heads in close proximity tothe previous insect's rear end. Nor do I enjoy having a mechanicaldependent that I have to feed and house all the time, even though Irarely have need of it. I do sometimes need to use a car, and then Irent one or use one from a car-sharing service that charges by thehour. The most enjoyable parts of that exercise is when I pick it up and when I drop it off. Cars end up costing me a few hundred dollars each year, whichis a few hundred dollars more than I would like to spend on them.

I do like bicycles. They are about themost ingenious form of transportation humans have been able to inventso far. I especially like mine, which I bought second-hand, from afriend, for something like $150. That was about 20 years ago. Itstill has a lot of the original parts: frame, fork, chainrings andcranks, bottom bracket, rims and hubs. The spokes and rims werereplaced once; the cables twice; the freewheel, cassette and chainfive or six times; the tires a dozen times or more; I've lost countof the inner tubes, which don't last long thanks to all the brokenglass on the road from cars smashing into each other. Over time, I'veupgraded various bits. Nice titanium break levers from a used partsbin at a local bicycle school set me back $10. One of the down-tubeshift lever mechanisms fell apart (it was partly made of plastic),and I replaced it with an all-metal one from a nearby bin at the sameestablishment. The original rear derailleur was by Suntour, which nolonger exists, and so I replaced it with a Shimano part, for $60, Irecall. Ruinous expense, that! (The front derailleur is still theoriginal Suntour.) The frame is made of very high qualitychrome-molybdenum alloy of a sort rarely encountered today. Chromeand molybdenum prices have gone up by a lot since then, andsteelmakers have found new ways to cut corners. It survived a ride upand down the East Coast aboard a sailboat, exposed to the elements,without a problem. It looks like a beat-up, rusty old road bike—notsomething bicycle thieves normally find interesting—and that'sexactly how a bicycle should be made to look even when it is new.
I ride something like 7 km just aboutevery weekday of the year. Sometimes I ride quite a bit farther,spending half a day meandering through the countryside or along thecoast. I've ridden as much as 160 km in one day; that was a bittiring. I rarely take the shortest path, preferring meandering bikepaths that go through parks and along the river. I do ride throughtraffic quite a bit of the time, and have developed a style forkeeping safe. I pay minimal attention to traffic signals and lights(they wouldn't be needed if it weren't for cars) and mostly just payattention to the movements of cars. (Traffic lights are sometimesuseful in predicting the behavior of cars, but not reliably, and notso much in Boston.) I also tend to take up a full lane whenever abicycle lane is not available (cars are not a prioritized form oftransportation, to my mind). A person who is in a hurry, here inBoston, would get there sooner by riding a bicycle. I understand thatthis annoys certain drivers quite a lot, raising their bloodpressure. Perhaps the elevated blood pressure will, in due course,get them off the road, along with their cars, freeing up the spacefor more bicycles.
In the summer, my riding attireconsists of a tank-top, shorts, and flip-flops (I've tried variouscombinations of pedals with toeclips, clipless pedals and bicycleshoes with cleats, and eventually settled on the most basic pedalsavailable and flip-flops. I've also experimented with paddedbicycling shorts and jerseys made of Lycra, and found them tooconfining. Also, I just couldn't get over the feeling that Ishouldn't wear such outfits, no more than I should be going around intights and a tutu, and so I went back to wearing hiking shorts. Butit can be a fine show when Balet russe comes rolling through town.When it rains, I put on a Gortex bicycle jacket that evaporates thesweat while keeping the rainwater out. The hood goes under thehelmet, keeping my head dry as well.
The bicycling outfit gets morecomplicated in wintertime. The Gortex jacket is still there, butunderneath it is a hoodie, under that a wool shirt and thermalunderwear (microfiber works best). The shorts are replaced withjeans, with Gortex zip-on pants over them for messy weather. Theflip-flops are replaced with insulated, waterproof half-boots, withtwo layers of wool socks. Add ski gloves and a ski mask, and theoutfit is complete.
Oddly enough, bicycling on a frosty butdry winter day is even more enjoyable than on a balmy summer day.Firstly, in the winter cooling is not an issue, so I can ride as fastas I want without breaking a sweat. If I start feeling too warm, Ican unzip the jacket partway and get all the cooling I want.Secondly, there is the realization that bicycling in wintertime ismore comfortable than walking, since I can generate as much heat as Ineed to keep warm simply by going faster. The one somewhat unpleasantpart of winter riding is the wind: cold winter air is a lot denserthan warm summer air: a 20 km/h headwind is hard to pedal against inthe summer, but much harder in the winter. (I recently rode acrosstown in a gale, and it was not unlike a mountain climb, grinding awayin the lowest gear. The ride back was all downwind, and I was flying,riding the brakes the entire way.)
Snow and ice present an interesting setof challenges to a two-wheeled vehicle. I've experimented withstudded tires, fat cyclocross tires with deep treads and regular roadtires. Road tires won. Studded tires on both front and back are ahuge performance killer, making a fast road bike into more of astationary exercise bike. Putting the studded tire just on the front(which is where it is really needed the most, since the rear canfishtail all it wants without compromising stability) helps quite alot. But overall, studded tires create a false sense of security; itis better, I have found, to keep the regular road tires on and simplylearn to recognize and adjust to the conditions.
High-pressure road bicycle tires havetiny contact patches, and apply tremendous pressure to the roadsurface—enough to indent packed snow, creating side-to-sidetraction. It's still not possible to bank steeply, but it is quitepossible to keep balance by slowing down. Fore-and-aft traction isnot quite as good, making rapid acceleration and braking unlikely. Ona slippery surface, the game becomes to avoid breaking frictionbetween the road and the tire. Tires with a deep tread seem to workwell on mud, but do not seem to help at all on snow, because thetread becomes packed with compacted snow, causing a lot of rollingresistance but not much traction. With regular road tires, the onlytruly frictionless surfaces I have found so far are smooth icecovered by water and oiled steel plates. When I encounter either ofthese, I get off and walk, having once wiped out quite badly on anoiled steel plate, in the middle of summer, in fine weather.
If any of this seems strange to you,then there may be something funny going on inside your head and youshould get it checked out. Around the world, for over a century,people everywhere have used the bicycle to get around in every kindof climate and weather. There are year-round bicyclists in theSahara, as well as in Edmonton, Alberta. Bicycling year-round is verymuch a solved problem everywhere. Here in Boston I know dozens ofpeople who commute by bicycle year-round, and I see hundreds ofpeople out on bicycles, every day, at all times of the year.
And yet with just about any randomgroup of people I encounter the idea of bicycling through winter isregarded as very strange: somewhere between suicidal and heroic. (Thefact that driving a car is far more dangerous, and suicidal onmultiple levels, does not seem to register with most people.) Whatcan I say? To each his own. As for me, I am perfectly comfortableriding a bicycle year-round.