Four thoughts:
1. Thank God I live in Southern California, and don’t ever have to worry about sleet or icy pavement. (on the other hand: no excuses to grab the car keys rather than the bike lock keys on account of weather)
2. “Dew” rag? Ummm… never mind. Thank God I am comfortably acquainted with Black culture and surrounded by folks of all races.
3. “LBS” = cyclist slang for Local Bike Shop.
4. “the X” = cyclist slang for an Xtracycle, aka “S.U.B.” (Sport Utility Bike). I have one too, and ought to post some of my own Xtracycle adventures here. But for this holiday season, I can’t beat yesterday’s story by David Morrison, clearly a friend whom I simply haven’t met yet.
First trip in cold weather on the X
Originally posted in RootsRadicals by “David Morrison” davidmorrison@mindspring * com, Sunday Dec 2, 2007 1:07 pm (PST)
Ok, so it’s 7:00 in the morning and I have hoped to sleep in. Outside winter’s first icy fingers have drifted across our region, dropping the temperature to freezing for the first time this year. They are calling for rain at least, and possibly sleet and snow later. Outside it is not raining or sleeting yet, but from the corner of my window I can see through from my pillow the sky has this leaden, heavy look which does not look promising - and we have nothing in the house for breakfast of dinner later. I roll over. The bed feels warm and snuggly and I know that down in the garage my car awaits, with a heater, while in the bike room a few yards away from its parking space the X and my resolution to live my life as car-free as possible also awaits. I roll over again.
As cold as it as outside, I know I will not take my car and I calculate it would be better to go now when the weather is clear than later when it might start to sleet. So, with the air of one ripping off a bandage in one sharp pull, I cast away my covers and leap out of bed. Chanting under my breath to myself the mantra that there is no such thing as bad weather, there is no such thing as bad weather, I start searching my closet for the appropriate clothing for a bike ride in the freezing air down to Shirlington Village and, gratefully, find and pull on a set of long underwear.
The underwear was a present several years before but relatively rarely used. It’s made of some sort of man made super fabric that, according to the label description, is supposed to move sweat away from my skin along a network of micro-wicking conduits that makes me imagine a landscape of infinitely small irrigation canals crossing and recrossing my chest before moving up to my shoulders, a man-made wondercloth that in a miraculous way will move sweat rapidly (I imagine microscopic water canons) away as vapor into that little sliver of atmosphere between the underwear and my next layer of clothing. The thing is that with this sort of introduction on the label, and the intimation from the gift-giver that the underwear was really expensive, I have been disinclined to wear it lest I damage it it or make it lose its micro-wicking qualities. But as I slap my shoulders in my room to warm them while looking for something to wear I think this morning warrants the risk. Sweat is mere memory from a day, I think, back in early September.
The next layer, bike pants, and then a pair of jeans that i last wore when I was 30 pounds heavier and which still need a belt to tug them close around my hips, even over the two underlayers. A wool and polyester sweater that I used last to chop wood in when helping a friend restock his woodpile goes on over the long underwear top. It still smells as little bit of wood smoke and bark and I shake it hard before I put it on thinking the larva of something might have hatched out in the intervening months and I would rather evict them now than feel them crawling across my neck right in the middle of some crucial intersection.
Plain cotton socks (the wool ones are too thick), generic sort of athletic shoes and a sort of dew rag which is black and has images of screaming eagle and slogans in yellow which read FEEL THE WIND, Ride to Live, Ride Hard and Follow No One printed on it will go on my head. My buddy Rich thinks and has pointed out the dew rag is insanely tacky and pointed out that is was really meant more for motorcycle gangs than weenies on bicycles, but I can’t possibly fit my helmet over a knit cap and I want something else on my head other than a helmet with holes cut in it.
Bike gloves without fingers, a light outer shell jacket from REI to server as a windbreaker and an old but favorite scarf completes the costume. Helmeted, I risk a look in the mirror and take a degree of pleasure that I actually look less like a sort of space alien in this get up than I usually do in my bike jersey, shoes for the clipless peddles and padded bike shorts.
Since it’s already dawn and not yet raining I won’t need the headlight so leave it on the shelf. It’s rechargeable and slides onto a clip on my handlebars. I went ahead and got a pretty good one and while it lights up well and slides easily into position on my bike, it also slides easily off my bike too and while I trust my neighbors there is no sense tempting someone too much.
Making my way to the bike room, the building is silent. A few other churchgoers join me in the elevator on the way to the garage, but the air feels preoccupied by the early hour and the possibility of snow. People who live in other parts of the country mock my region for our inability to deal with winter weather that others find completely average - and they are likely right to do so. But I feel helpless to describe the feeling of dread that can accompany the phrase “wintery mix” in a forecast here. We need a meteorological FDR to remind us that the fear of ice and snow is far worse and more paralyzing than the ice and snow itself.
In the bike room the X is easily the sharpest and most regal of all the bikes. Even the 20-something pups from the tenth floor, with their ultra-skinny tire racers have nothing with which to compare. Sure, on their bikes in terms of speed they will blow me away. But where are they on their errands, buying groceries, dropping off things, hauling stuff? In their cars.
The length of the X is what I really forget sometimes and notice it most when I have to negotiate a door with the bike, like the door to the bike room, I have hunted around for a rock from outside I can use to prop the door open while I unlock the wheel out the bike. My brand of lock is named after s bulldog and carries not only a really hefty appearance but a guarantee as well that will more than pay for my X should someone defeat it and steal the bike. But what is most cool in a day to day way is that the lock key has the same sort of little light in it to illuminate opening it that many auto locks to shine on their car doors. This oddly only deepens impression that while on the one hand my X is cool and new, on the other hand itis merely another transportation choice and a mundane one at that. Bike locks with lights in them deny that this morning I am doing anything as revolutionary as giving the finger to the petrochemical energy, fighting to move more excess weight off my frame or refusing to contribute yet still more to our carbon mess. It gives me hope that, one day, this will not be that unusual but instead, wherever possible, in fact pretty routine.
Outside now and away. My shopping bag is in the freeloaders as is the bike lock. The pedaling is easy and the air cold, quiet and, improbably, feels pure. In the whole trip this morning I will be the only cyclist. Everyone else will be in their cars, or running or walking their dogs. It’s the dog walkers who give me the most attention. “Daddy, look, look,” said one tyke out with his father and having maybe forgotten not to point and I give him a wave as I pass. It’s cold and I am grateful for the clothes I have, but not so cold that I regret leaving the car behind.
At the grocery store I am one of the only customers and make quick work of my smoked fish, light cream cheese, bag of grapefruit and other items, several canned. The clerk looks at my bike helmet and the pretty full bag bag and asked “you aren’t carrying this on your back are you.” “Nope,” I grinned pointed over his shoulder to where the X waited. Wow! That is one cool bike! Thanks, I said as I sauntered out to load up and head to my next stop, the local bakery for a couple of biscotti for the coffee this morning and a baguette for tonight.
Here, even in the winter, a little culture of early coffee drinkers pull themselves from their Washington Post and watch me lock up the bike and come inside. There is already a line at the counter and as I wait I notice a couple even get up from their seats to go out into the cold to get a closer look. “I haven’t seen anything like this since I came back from Holland,” said one who told me he and his wife had spent a year almost entirely on bikes in Amsterdam a few years ago and he asked where he could get one which gave me an excuse to pull out the LBS card and to tell him about the site before heading home.
I know that my moving away from my car and onto a bike is not going to solve any one of our many environmental or political problems and that whatever energy I might save or calories I spent this morning are nothing but a tiny drop in an ocean. But I have lost more than 40 pounds so far by making little steps such as this so I have direct experience that little things can and do matter. Plus, for whatever reason riding a bike makes me happy and that might be, in the end, the biggest reason I got up this morning, bundled out into the cold and used my bike instead of my car. A coolish trip biking beat a comfy trip in my car hands down. 
DCM
