Some things are done almost without thinking. Feeling the chill in the air when getting out of bed in the dark, trying to judge what it says about the temperature outside. Checking the windows first thing in the morning to see how much they are frosted over. Completely covered with frost means it was a very cold night. Below zero (Fahrenheit) for certain.
Thursday morning I scrambled out of bed to shut off the alarm in the darkness. Immediately my half-conscious mind began: It was cold, much colder than normal in the bedroom. Bad, I thought, mind still foggy with sleep. It was Thursday, a bicycle morning. That was enough for an inward groan. Around zero is all right for a bicycle ride, but anything lower is . . . difficult. I dressed hurriedly, feeling the chill sucking away my heat. Passing the hall window on the way downstairs I glanced out, trying to gauge how much frost covered the window. Cold, yes, but nothing to indicate any reason the house would be so much colder than any other morning.
Downstairs I stood blinking in the kitchen light and my first thought was–this is really cold. Unnaturally cold. And–something is wrong. This is far too cold for the house. It feels frigid. A quick look at the thermometer in the kitchen and I see we’re down to 54 degrees. There is a repair truck in the driveway. Yes, voices in the basement. Just great. It’s 14 degrees below zero and we’ve no heat. Inside temperature is dropping fast.
Oh no. Are the pipes frozen? I see a big pot on the stove, boiling furiously, and decide that water must have been drawn. The pipes are still okay. I quickly find my rubber boots, pull on my coat, and head down into the basement. If the furnace has a big problem we could have real trouble. It’s 14 below zero and with dawn the temperature will only plunge further. Not the first thing I want to be considering on waking up.
Dad and the repair man are in the basement. The lights are on, the kerosene heater is burning. Still cold in the basement. Everything is cold. I’m still not feeling entirely awake and quite rushed in thinking so many things so quickly after waking up, but I ask the repair man what the problem is.
“Seems it was a blown fuse.”
Dad must have seen my blank look (we have a circuit breaker, not a fuse box,) because he says, “Someone wired in a fuse on the line in between the furnace and the breaker box. It must have blown sometime in the night.”
Why, I ask. Nobody knows. The repair man finishes reassemblying the furnace and the furnace comes on. A simple fix. We’ve heat again, but it’ll be awhile before the house regains its warmth.
Such is the excitement of winter life. In the cold dark heart of winter that is January and February life sometimes seems governed by, and to consist of, watching the temperature readout for outdoors. How cold is it? How cold will it get? Will it get warm out today? How cold will it get tonight? Strange how the important things sometimes seem to dwindle to small point. The thermometer is one of those new-fangled things that has a remote sensor that can read both the inside and outside temperature to a tenth of a degree. Typical for the limitations of modern technology, it always gives out somewhere around negative 21 Fahrenheit. After that we’re left guessing exactly how cold it has become.
It is coldest at dawn. How many people realize this? It is true. Sitting around the table, the windows blank with the pre-dawn dark we watch the temperature plunge as morning approaches. In the last hour before the sun climbs over the horizon the temperature can drop as much as ten degrees. After the sun comes over the horizon the temperature rebounds just as fast, but for that short time just before dawn winter is at its most brutal. It is also the time when I go on my morning bicycle ride.
Riding in The Winter
There is no good reason for why I go riding in such miserable weather. There isn’t even a rational reason. Maybe it is for the same reason that men go exploring the north pole–I am looking about the same by the time I come back from my sub-zero morning rides.
I could offer several different answers, but no single one really explains such an act totally devoid of common sense. I could say I do it because I like to see the horrified and unbelieving expressions that I get. I could say I do it because I don’t want to give in to the cold weather. I do it every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday for the rest of the year, why should I stop now? Maybe it’s my little bit of recklessness in a stultifying and boring life of sitting in front of a computer and just typing.
It is both not so bad as you think, and worse than you probably imagine. That is, if done right, taking a bicycle ride in -20 weather is survivable . . . even bearable with the right equipment. It’s different . . . and in a different sort of way–fun. But also it is very wearying. It is, frankly, a challenge, and perhaps that is the best way of explaining why I do it. Take a bicycle ride in such insanely cold weather is a challenge and I like a challenge.
It is challenge to out-survive winter. By the time the cold weather finally breaks I am mentally exhausted from facing the early morning chill. Every day, subtly, grinds at my will to persevere. Honestly, I make life worse for myself–mostly because I am cheap. Any reasonable person who considers bicycling out in subzero weather would probably buy themselves some special gear–I haven’t, not yet. I am certain to get soft in my old age, so I doubt such a boast is going to last much longer. Already I bought myself a decent pair of gloves and boot socks. But otherwise I wear a regular, rather tattered, winter coat (no sweater), and two pairs of sweat pants. I also wear a head band to keep my ears warm.
The key, of course, is to keep working. If you stand still out in the frigid sub-zero cold you will freeze to death. Keep pedaling and you might just keep warm. I figure -20 is about as far as I dare safely go without buying any special gear. But at that temperature I ought to wear two pairs of sweat pants, long underwear, and two pairs of underwear. Sweat pants are very bad at keeping out the wind.
A common question is frostbite. Answer: It can happen, you bet. Don’t do what I’m doing unless you know what you’re doing. You dress wrong and you can freeze fast, and bad. That said, it’s not a foregone conclusion that if you’re out in sub-zero weather you will freeze. I do not wear any covering on my face and has never been frost bit (yet) and I don’t intend to let it. Much to the amazement of most people, my face is the part of me which causes the least trouble. My nose doesn’t freeze, even if all my nose hairs do, and not my cheeks. I get a healthy crust of ice on my facial hair, but that is insulating.
It is important to understand that wind is more dangerous than cold. It is hard to bike in a stiff wind, but it is also more uncomfortable–savage, I would say–to try and bicycle in anything near sub-zero temperatures. Below zero–forget about it.
This is my third winter bicycling. I find it fascinating how my body interacts and fights with the weather. It is a war between my metabolism and the weather and there is a rhythm to the battle. At a certain point in my ride I will reach a point of perfection–a short period of time where I feel perfect. It is as if the cold can’t touch me. I feel great. It is as if one might say “What is the big deal about riding in this weather? I feel great!” Most of the rest of the time, some part of my body is in the process of freezing, or unfreezing.
With my current attire anything above zero is pretty good, so long as there is no wind. Anything down to -10 isn’t too bad. I loathe going out in weather below -15 and will actually delay my ride if I think I can get the temperature up slightly. Down around -20 makes me start thinking of Jack London’s short story “To Build A Fire” (see http://mbhs.bergtraum.k12.ny.us/cybereng/shorts/firelndn.html for Jack London’s excellent rendition of what it is like to be in the very cold. I hope I am never where it is that cold.) At -20 the weather begins to feel downright savage. Warmth is sucked away in an instant. I can go from warm to freezing so fast it is hard to notice the difference.
But, most of the time it isn’t too bad. It’s different. At -10 I am out in a world that somehow seems strangely different, clear, pale, and empty. The world is silent in the deep morning chill, a silent and almost alien landscape.
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