The Velorution Will Be Winterized!

FIRST! Here's some good winter riding advice at Bike Winter because it's getting colder and colder outside.

It's finally cold enough to have to cover my hands and ears and put away my Crocs. It's getting to be about that time that we start to think about the rougher weather ahead of us. The thrift store is becoming familiar with my face, as I've been stopping in looking for boots, gloves, jackets, long underwear and whatnot. My oversized messenger bag is getting chubbier by the day with all the extra layers I'm stowing in it, growing inversely proportionate to the temperature outside.

Last winter, I rode my bike well into December, but eventually became intimidated by the ice and the dark. The actual cold didn't have very much to do with it. I leave work at 6pm, and in the dead of the winter, 6pm is dark. A dark commute is dangerous. A slick commute is dangerous. Put them together and that's one dangerous bike ride. But I stay as visible as possible and remember that classic bit of sage advice typically reserved for small children: "They're as afraid of you as you are of them." Okay, some nights, it's more of a mantra... and okay, maybe it applies better to spiders. But I know after a couple years of bicycle commuting, I can say with confidence that it's the rare motorist that really wants to run you down. Not saying they don't exist... I'm just saying that most of them (if they see you) will meet you halfway whether they want to or not. All you have to do is be seen and your chances of survival increase significantly! Yay!

The really rough weather though, only applies to a very slight fraction of the days over the winter. Most days are a piece of cake. Where I live, they plow and salt the roads (eventually). After a while, the accumulation of salt will take care of any slight dusting of snow that most precipitation is over Chicago winters. Most days, it's only the cold and dark I have to contend with. Funny thing about buying winter accessories at the thrift store, the hideously bright items go last, and for cheap! I know that sometimes it's hard to leave the house looking like an 80's nightmare, but you have to ask yourself: what punishment in Fashion Hell is worth your fool neck here on earth?

About being cold... really all you have to be very concerned about are your fingers and toes. Don't go out in snowboots, winter gloves and your undies, but the most vulnerable part of you, by far will be all your digits. Make sure you are protecting them.

People ride in all kinds of footwear including, but not limited to: work boots, puffy moonboots, galoshes with several layers of socks inside, any kinda shoe with boot covers or even plastic grocery bags... This last option, although I've never done it myself, is apparantly highly effective in a pinch. Tie them on really good, of course, and tuck the hanging bits in to avoid getting them tangled in the various moving parts. I'm wearing my beloved, pink moon boots at the moment, but I tore an identical pair on my gnarly metal pedals before (a cautionary tale) and don't want these to go the same way. To that end, I've special ordered a pair of Bogs (I think I've mentioned before), and really, I'm rather excited to get 'em.

While at the thrift store, I have purchased gloves of varying thickness and sizes for my household. I intend to wear these in layers. I recently bought a nice, expensive pair of thick gloves that have worked very well for me so far. So well, actually, that whereever I ride, I show up with sweaty hands and soggy gloves. The gross part is when you get geared back up to go back the opposite direction, you have to put on sweaty gloves (ew). So, I plan on wearing layers of thin gloves (easily taken apart and dried separately), and removing them as I ride, according to warmth.

I had a very hard time convincing myself to ride in the cold. Still do, when it's morning and I'm freshly out of bed. I tend to get cagey and crabby in the wintertime. I hate the winter and hate being cold. I am NOT a winter person, and living as I do in the midwest, that's a handicap of sorts. You could never imagine unless you do it, how getting on a bike and getting moving- even if the wind is blowing and it's snowing buckets- will warm you up. It's true though that you will be cold for the first few minutes. But there's a solution.

I learned this from David, my cycling guru/mentor/sensai: Before you walk out the door, spend some time indoors with some or all of your gear on. Hat, gloves, boots, coat, balaclava, whathaveyou... and after about five minutes indoor with all your gear on, you will be grateful to get out into the cold. Because with all that on indoors, you are going to warm up fast! Maybe allow yourself that last five minutes to dawdle and finish your coffee. I've often found myself stepping out the door and immediately removing a layer or few that I'd thought I needed.

At the end of the day, it all comes down to what you want to do. No one but you can make you do it. Just believe me, it's not as bad as you think it's going to be (who am I trying to convince?).

The Prodigal Wallet

According to Merriam-Webster, the word Prodigal(n) can mean a couple things:

1: One who spends or gives lavishly and foolishly.

or

2: One who has returned after an absence.

My wallet is both of those things.

I don't lose my wallet very often, but I suppose I lose it more often than a lot of people do. Maybe once every 1.5 to 2 years. This year, though, I've lost it twice. Actually, twice within the last four months or so. One of those times was last night.

All of this would be a sadder story if the wallet didn't come back every time, but it does. When I say, "every time," let me tell you what I mean. Of the last five times I've lost my wallet, every time it has returned to me, with everything in it. I don't remember ever having lost my wallet and it just being gone forever. It's always come back with everything in it.

I once dropped it in a rest area in a whole 'nother state, and an elderly woman found it and shipped it back to me. One of the few, brief moments in my life that my state ID actually had my current address on it.

Once, I dropped it on the Capitol Square when I was living in Madison, WI. A week later, a police officer had tracked me down and was knocking on my door to give it back.

Once, I dropped my wallet on the sidewalk outside of a building downtownish and the security person in that building found it, brought it inside, called my credit card and had my credit card call me to come get it.

Once I left it at a greasy spoon after a night of drinking and dancing and was able to get it back from them. That one was especially stressful because I had someone else's Devo tickets in there too.

Most recently, I dropped it in the middle of the street. You can even tell it's been run over by the mangling of the little plastic keyring on its corner. I woke up this morning to a man blowing up my phone, calling me over and over, saying he has my wallet, he's in the neighborhood, and can I come get it.

Imagine me, if you will, waking up only 5 minutes before I usually leave the house, learning that I'd lost my wallet via anonymous text message, pulling on any clothes I can find to wear to work, while on the phone, frantically arranging to meet a stranger at a nearby fast food restaurant so I can grab my wallet from him on my way to work.  

I got there in probably a mere ten minutes from waking up. I was so wired by the urgency of the situation that I gave this stranger an enthusiastic hug, thanked him profusely and took off for work.

Everything was in there:

• Two credit cards
• Two debit cards
• Two CTA fare cards
• One dollar, cash
• A $250 check my mom had written that ANYONE could have cashed
• My ID
• A prescription card for my cat's cat food
• A bunch of bicycle-themed, hand-drawn stickers I'd made
• A receipt for a $90 purchase that I need to have with me when I go to pick up a pair of boots I'd special ordered from a shoe store and had paid for in full

This time, I didn't even have to suffer the anxiety of knowing that my wallet was lost and not knowing where to find it.

Dear Mr. James Walletfinder, sir: you are an angel.

Dear Universe: I am a little creeped out, but endlessly appreciative of all the little ways you keep watching out for me.

Repertoire of Fun

I'm 29 years old and I've spent most of my life on a diet. After the 1st grade, my mother had pulled me out of grade school to home school me when I consistently came home crying because the other kids picked on me and called me fat (I wasn't). When Richard Simmons came out with Sweatin' to the Oldies and Deal-a-Meal in 1988 or so, my mom and I were doing it. That means I might've been about 8 when my mom and I were dieting together.

I eventually discovered that all the times I decided to diet because I wanted to be skinny or because I wanted to be sexy, I have failed. Wanting to be skinny just because other people told me I wasn't, I failed. Only the times when I was motivated by not wanting to die young, or wanting to be able to run, or wanting to be one of those sassy, spry little old ladies, only then was I able to make lasting changes and develop good habits.

Even more recently, and I'm going to put on my Captain Obvious cap for this one, I discovered, it's got to be fun or else I won't do it. Some people have discipline. I do not. The main reason I get up in the morning and ride my bike to work (besides that it's faster, cheaper and healthy) is because it's fun.

It's fun for me to ride it in the rain.
It's fun for me to ride it in the dark.
It's fun for me to ride it in the cold.
It's fun for me to ride it naked.
I would ride it in a box/with a fox...

And I have the hoop. I am building my repertoire of fun.

What's My Motivation Here?

I've been asked why I'd consider riding a bike across the country. I suppose it's important for me to investigate this question, because it's not all that obvious to everyone.

The answer is multifaceted. It has the obvious aspect of seeing the country and places I've never been. It has the dubiously attractive aspect of fleeing everything I know for weeks and months on end. It is reckless in the way that anyone would recognize, as I live hand to mouth with my chosen family as it is, and it would mean upheaval of almost everything and I would likely lose my very decent job. It is a dream that I fear I will fail at seeing through, despite the support of the people I love and my slow but steady collection of information on touring.

It's all I think about these days. If I'm not reading blogs and articles on bicycle touring, I'm scouring Craigslist for a good, cheap touring bike. I spend a lot of time wondering how much it'll cost to buy all I need without settling for crap gear.

The hooping aspiration isn't just for the love of hooping. It is, but it isn't. I'm also imagining my collapsible hoop bungeed to the back of my bike, at the ready to entertain. I want to be someone that other people want to meet, and maybe someone that people will want to take care of if it comes down to that. Like as if I were a stray, people will feed me if they want me to stick around. But like I said, it is also about my love for hooping and the beauty of the talent. My friend Annie is an excellent hoop dancer, has a fire hoop and performs for people who adore her for it.

I've always had a fair amount of envy for people who were able to just get up and leave. Not just able monetarily, but that it's an allowance in their life at all. That they can and that they do. Granted, this is going to take a lot of planning, budgeting and a lot of money that I know I won't have; also, it's not like I'm going to wander off into the Catskills and make a home of a hemlock stump, but still.

As a child, My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George resonated with me. Before reading that, I remember packing things up to take off to the forest preserve when I was probably younger than ten, planning on making my way in what I had perceived to be the wilderness. Later, I built lean-tos out of fallen limbs in the woods surrounding my family's cottage in northern Wisconsin. Related, but different; I remember at about eighteen years old, the first time I decided to go on a (car) road trip on my own to meet my online boyfriend in Ohio. I was driving, drunk with the exhilaration of being out, alone and doing my own thing.

So, the idea of striking out on my own to do something so significant appeals to me. It appeals to the core of who I am and who I've always been. The camping and surviving I'll need to do is something I feel like I've been hungry for all my life.
Just a few months ago, I had decided that I was going to actively try to have a baby. I was charting my fertility and the whole nine yards. Maybe all the baby talk is part of why I feel so desperately that I need to do something like my bike tour. Maybe I just need to get more done.

I love adventure. I collect experiences. I once participated in a research study in which I had to have four brain MRIs in a month, only in part because of the $400 I was paid for it. I just had never had an MRI before.

People treat me well for whichever reason. Maybe it's because I'm friendly. Maybe it's because I smile all the time. But it's true, people tend to treat me well more often than not. I don't rely on it, it just happens. This isn't an example of motivation to go, but maybe a reason I'm not so afraid to.

Because people treat me well, I think I've been spoiled. I would welcome being wrong about the kindness of strangers as a learning opportunity. I would welcome the opportunity to solve my own problems all by myself in the middle of nowhere.

I'm afraid of having nothing interesting to say. When I'm old, I want to be able to tell stories that people would want to hear over and over.