Winter bikes

What is a “winter bike”? If you have one bike and you ride it in the winter, that’s a “winter bike”. If you have a nice bike and you ride it a lot and you don’t want to beat it up in bad weather, it may mean something else. That’s where we’re going today.

I started riding in the winter on January 1, 1966, when I got my paper route. I rode 364 days/year. After some time off (because I was close enough to walk to work for a long time) I have been back to riding to work every day (in a wintery clime) since January 1995. I don’t count riding in the San Francisco Bay Area as winter riding. I have had a few dedicated winter (or bad weather in general) bikes in those years.

The images below (except the Spot) are not my actual bikes but roughly representative.

Image from Bicycling.com

Image from Amazon

How the well-equipped paperboy rode

• “Western Flyer” by Western Auto. When I got my paper route, the guy I took over for said I could have the bike for ten bucks. It was what later came to be known as a “Balloon Tire Bomber” and is a lot like what subsequently came to be known as a “Beach Cruiser”. These were also the first mountain bikes, when mountain biking consisted of riding downhill as fast as possible, then walking back up. Steel frame, 26x 2.25 inch tires, single speed, New Departure coaster brake, Ashtabula cranks. It came equipped with giant steel baskets. The rears were long and deep enough to hold newspapers folded in half (papers were bigger in those days) and wide enough to fit papers further folded in thirds. The front was big enough to hold papers laid flat, or hold the over-the-shoulder newspaper bag stuffed to the gills. I equipped it with a center-mount kickstand (like on a motorcycle). Traction was not an issue carrying that much weight, and streets were plowed earlier and more frequently in those days. Pro: indestructible, simple. Con: heavy.

Western Flyer image from eBay

• Schwinn “Varsity”. I inherited this bike from my dad around the time he died. Steel frame, ten speed (2×5 Huret Allvit, labeled “Schwinn Approved”), sidepull brakes (Weinmann, labeled “Schwinn Approved”) with “safety” levers (which I removed), 27 x 1.25 (?) tires, steel rims. With derailleur cables mounted on the downtube, and no fenders, they tended to ice up from the slush kicked up by the front wheel. The bike became a single-speed in whatever gear I was in when it froze. Rim brakes on steel rims are terrible when wet. Skinny tires are lousy in the winter. Some folks say they will cut through the snow right down to the pavement. Some folks are wrong. Pro: cheap (free). Con: heavy, poor traction, poor braking, frequent gear failures, wet feet and back.

Schwinn Varsity Image from HRDS India

• Specialized “Globe”. This was the first bike I bought for bad weather. It was a great concept. The execution was poor. 7-speed Shimano Nexus internally-geared hub, rear roller brake, front V-brake, fenders, chainguard, generator lights, built-in lock, 26x 1.5 tires. The rear brake worked great in all weather. The cheap steel chainring teeth broke off readily. The mounts for the fenders and chainguard broke. (I was able to fabricate new ones from low-temperature thermoplastic scraps I keep around the house, because replacement parts were not available.) The lock jammed frequently, so I stopped using it so it would jam in the unlocked position. The lighting system (which cleverly used a copper strip running along in the inside of the rear fender to bring power to the taillight) never worked right. The rear light had to be rewired before I took the bike home from the shop. The front light burned out frequently – my guess is they did not appropriately match the output of the generator to the input need of the bulb. I came to carry a redundant lighting system and spare bulbs at all times because it would fail so frequently. Then the light mount broke and it just fell off while riding – luckily, not into the spokes. The riding position was upright, with the rider’s weight on the rear wheel. The wheelbase was long. As a result, the bike was unstable in turns in dry conditions, deadly in wet. I made frequent visits to a mechanic on the way home from work, with quick repairs made while I waited. I don’t know how many chainrings I went through. Finally, there was a catastrophic failure of the rear hub while crossing a 6 lane divided street pulling my kids in the trailer. I found the cranks spinning effortlessly (and ineffectually) and jumped off to run the rest of the way across the street. The mechanic opened up the hub, thinking he could weld the cog back onto the hub body. He said it was not repairable – just not enough metal in there to weld. A new hub would cost almost as much as the bike. He then opened up a newer one and said I must not have been the first to have this failure, as the newer hub was beefier inside. He suggested I contact Specialized and Shimano. I gave Specialized a list of the problems. They put me in touch with the bike’s designer. He essentially said, “You’re right. The bike isn’t made for the way you use it. Too bad.” (See paragraph 3, previous post re: testing.) Shimano didn’t respond at all. Pro: Interesting concept. Roller brake simple and effective. Fenders, lights, generator, chainguard, rack, internally geared hub. Con: Doesn’t work. Frequent repairs. Catastrophic failure. Heavy. Poor handling.

Specialized Globe image from Road Bike Action

• Raleigh “M60” Mountain bike. My first foray into the world of mountain bikes. Aluminum frame, front suspension, V-brakes, 3×7 gearing (low-end Shimano Acera). I figured if I equipped it with fenders, lights, rack, and studded tires for winter, I could ride it in all weather. It had a crankset with cheap stamped steel chainrings. The right crank and rings were welded together as a unit so the rings could not be replaced without replacing the crankset. I did that several times, as the whole crankset was cheaper than good rings. I had to replace the wheels, as the braking surface wore down from winter grit (sand and salt). I eventually bought a second set of wheels so I could swap wheels seasonally instead of changing tires. The wheels I bought had aluminum spoke nipples. They crack under load. Luckily I had saved all the brass nipples from the trashed wheels, so I could replace nipples as they failed. Anodized aluminum spoke nipples may look cool, but they are worthless. I replaced the derailleurs multiple times due to winter’s toll. I finally overhauled it thoroughly and gave it to my son before I had to spend any more money on it. I had gone through at least 3 drivetrains and wheel sets. Pro: generally reliable (meaning it didn’t break down in use, it just needed frequent overhauls), top tube cable routing keeps them out of the gunk. Con: Expensive upkeep.

Raleigh M60 Image from Bicycle Czar

• Spot Brand “Five Points”. Aluminum frame, steel fork, Sram 3 -speed hub, Avid Elixir hydraulic disc brakes, Gates Carbon belt drive, 700x40c tires. (700×32 studs in winter – narrower so they would fit under the fenders despite the studs) All of the experiences above led to my current bad weather bike. The internally-geared hub of the Globe was a good idea but the more gears you put in a hub, the heavier it gets, the more fragile it becomes, and the more expensive it gets to replace. I briefly considered the 14 speed Rohloff hub, which I had heard great things about. I considered the NuVinci CVT (continuously-variable transmission). I went with a 3-speed because Sturmey-Archer has made 3-speeds longer than I’ve been alive and some of those older than I still work. I need a lower gear in the snow than I do in the rain, so I didn’t think a single speed was the best choice. 3-speed it is. (I looked at two-speeds, where you backpedal a tiny bit to shift gears – a system I recall from Schwinns in the 60s (and still made by Sturmey-Archer) – but decided to go for 3 speeds and disc brakes instead of a coaster brake. Disc brakes seemed to be the way to go for reliable braking in all weather. The rotor is farther from the wet roadway than the wheel rim so it gets less wet. It has a smaller diameter so braking friction dries it more quickly. If it wears through, it is cheaper to replace than a wheel. Cables can freeze up. Hydraulic brakes have been in use on cars for a long time. They use DOT brake fluid (not mineral oil, as do some bike brakes), so I figured if I’m going to ride when it is -30 degrees, I want what works in cars when it’s that cold. I spent a lot of money on chains over the years and a lot of time cleaning and lubing chains at least weekly in the winter. To clean the belt means bringing the bike into the basement and slowly pouring a bucket of water on the belt as I turn the cranks, then letting it dry overnight before I ride it the next morning – and that’s only so the water doesn’t freeze. That made a belt drive the only way to go. Five plus (almost six) years later I don’t regret the decision. I have replaced the belt once so far. Seeing how it failed, I know what to look for in hopes that I can replace it before failure but not too soon. If I had to do it again I would get better brakes than the Avid Elixirs. Each time I change tires or remove a wheel for any reason I have to re-center the brakes. The pistons tend to stick so one caliper will drag. Lubricating pistons is fiddlier than lubricating a rim brake pivot (and needs to be done much more often). Bleeding hydraulic lines is more time-consuming than changing cables. Pads on disc brakes are much thinner than those on rim brakes, so they have to be replaced more often and cost more to replace. The original front pulley (AKA chainring) was plastic. The teeth wore down and I had to replace it. The replacement is aluminum so I hope it lasts longer. This may be the last winter bike I buy; at least while I continue working. Pro: Light, reliable, low maintenance, well-equipped, works in all weather. Con: brakes could be better.

Spot Brand bike

Note smaller diamter due to plastic tooth wear – you might have to zoom in to see that.

Note ragged edges of plastic teeth

Plastic vs aluminum pulley

All studded tires are not created equal. Some studs are too soft and wear down quickly. Some studs pop out of the tire. I use only Nokian/Suomi – from Finland, where they know snow) or Schwalbe (from Germany). There are many studded models from Suomi/Nokian – the more studs, the better the traction and the higher the weight.

One decision to make is: Do you want inexpensive components so you can replace them as they wear out, or higher quality in hopes they will last and/or be rebuildable? I have chosen cheaper components for winter. The Raleigh above was equipped with Shimano Acera. I went through derailleurs every couple of years. My Bruce Gordon has Shimano Deore XT derailleurs that are still going strong after 30+ years. Is that because I sprung for better parts, or because it stays inside all winter? I suspect the latter is a bigger contributor.

I have never owned an E-bike. One could be a winter bike. Battery life is greatly reduced in cold weather. Unless your commute is long, that should not be a problem.

For more winter biking tips, click the links in this sentence. Each will open a in a new page.

You may notice a fat bike is not on this list. I’m told that a fat bike is the way to go in “brown sugar” – the mixture of melted and refrozen snow mixed with sand and salt that tends to collect in intersections and at the edges of roadways. Fat bike is the way to go through unplowed streets or trails. Fat bikes are heavy (and even heavier if you put studded tires on them – fatties work in snow but not on ice). I wouldn’t want to ride a fat bike in summer rain – it would probably be a strictly winter bike – that would make three commuting bikes instead of two. I can’t justify that to myself. If I want to head out on trails in the winter, I’ll put on my skis.

Testing…testing…

A recent discussion about two year olds yielded two divergent views – the “terrible twos” and the “terrific twos”. What’s up?

The age of two is all about exploration. The world is new, everything is worthy of exploration, and the ability to communicate one’s experience is limited. How that appears to an adult is at least as much about the adult as it is about the child.

Someone I am close to is employed as a tester. It is their job to find failure in a system. They try all the stuff the developer didn’t try (but the consumer might) to find the failure points in the product. Developers generally don’t like testers. The tester’s job is to say “This doesn’t work. Go back and fix it.” Developers says “that’s not what you’re (the user) supposed to do”, or “it wasn’t designed for that.” Testers are not very popular since their job is to make your work fail until it doesn’t (and in the software world, the person who writes the program is paid twice what the person testing it is paid). James Bach, a software testing consultant, compares testing to childhood between the 20th and 24th minutes in this talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5821YeWico. (It’s more than an hour and a half, and I’ll admit I haven’t watched it all yet.)

The job of a tester is a lot like the job of a two year old. At two, we don’t have access to a lot of data. We toss something into the toilet, flush, and see what happens. Do we know that the same thing happens every time? No. Do we know that the same thing happens with different objects? No. We test. We explore. (If you don’t want your child to toss things in the toilet, get a toilet lid lock.) As a parent, we have a few jobs. The first is to keep our child safe, so we don’t allow opportunities for testing of things that are inherently dangerous. We know the potential outcome of sticking a fork into an electrical socket, so it is our job to limit those opportunities. Our next job is to help our child learn about the world. For that job, it is important for them to have ways to explore their environment. We need to get into the two year old mind and remember (or imagine, or experience) a time when everything is new. We might notice there is a large area between inherently dangerous and totally safe. So our job is to facilitate exploration while mitigating risk.

The “terrible twos” result when we are unable to get into the two year old mindset and when we take everything personally – “my child is just doing that to annoy me”, “why can’t s/he learn? ” – or when the child can’t express their frustration or lack of understanding in words that we can understand.

The “terrific twos” result when we are able to see the world through two year old eyes, when we are able to tap into a sense of wonder, when we are able to facilitate and join in that exploration, when we encourage our children to express themselves. (And it helps when that child is verbally precocious.)

It helps to be open and not make assumptions. When I was learning another language, my ability to understand what others were saying exceeded my ability to express myself. I heard their words, translated them in my head into English, and then had my reactions to what was said. To respond, I had to translate those reactions into the second language and speak them. That process is too slow for normal conversation, especially in a group. The result could be that someone assumes: 1) I have no clue what is going on, as I’m not speaking; 2) I understand everything because I am attending and sometimes nodding; 3) I am stuck up or stupid because I am not joining the conversation. It was only when I learned to think in another language that my expression began to align with my experience. That is when I began to speak a second language – when I could get what was inside to the outside in a way that was comprehensible to others. Might that be like the experience of the two year old?

When I work with patients with altered consciousness (in a state we usually call “unconscious”), I talk to them. Years ago I worked daily with a patient who was intubated, sedated, and chemically paralyzed for many days. One day I came to work and they were awake and alert, though not yet able to speak. As I talked, I asked, “have you ever seen me before?” The answer was a head shake. When I asked, “have you heard my voice?”, the answer was a nod. When I asked, “do you know who I am?”, the answer was an enthusiastic nod. This “unconscious” person had been attending to my voice for days.

So it may be with two year olds (and younger). Clearly they attend to our voices. How much meaning do they derive from that? Unless they can speak, we don’t know. Many parents are now teaching young children to sign before they have the oral motor skills to speak, so they can make their needs known. Usually they focus on basic needs like eating. Communicating emotional needs is often beyond the skill level of the parent who does not know ASL or another sophisticated sign language.

But what can we do? We can foster the language development of our children from a very young age by speaking and reading to them. We can use actual language and not just baby talk. We can honor their attempts to communicate by whatever means are at their disposal. We can be open to the possibility that they can understand us before we have strong evidence that they do, while at the same time not hold them to our belief that they know exactly what we mean and are being willfully defiant. In short, we can model for them the communication skills that we want them to develop.

Christmas Trees

Every year I go cut a Christmas tree. Since they are grown on a tree farm, they are a crop, albeit one with a longer growing period than your average vegetable. Last year, pickings were slim. This year, I read that they were slimmer yet. One article said it was due to reduced planting during the 2007-2009 recession.

At any rate, I decided to go earlier than usual this year. It was a steady 32 degrees (0 degrees C) with freezing rain. Freezing rain is when the precipitation comes down as rain and freezes on contact, as opposed to sleet which comes down in a frozen state. We had sleet in the morning and postponed our trip until it was supposed to be over. Instead of ending, it changed to freezing rain.

The trees in this place are tagged when ready for harvest. All of the tagged trees were small. All of the good-looking trees were untagged and many were fenced off. Next year looks like it will be great. In a nod to the aluminum trees of my youth (which my family eschewed), my favorite was this beautiful copper-colored tree. Alas, it was not tagged for harvest.

Some might call this tree “dead”, instead of “beautiful”.

The freezing rain made for some interesting phenomena.

The hang tags on the trees were coated in ice, which slipped off readily.

Needles coated in ice

Riding

Time on the bike this week has been limited to commuting. The winter bike had (again) a sticky brake piston. It took some work to free it up, but now the rear brake no longer drags. Riding is enough exercise without adding artificial resistance (like on an exercise bike). I rode it on the snowy day, but otherwise the good weather bike is still getting the miles. The winter bike got its annual Thanksgiving check up and, in a few weeks, will get its annual change to studded tires.

the Bruce Gordon

Spot Brand bike

good weather commuting — bad weather commuting

Since I haven’t mentioned them in a while, the Bruce Gordon is a light touring bike with half-step plus granny gearing (3×6), Shimano Deore XT, with cantilever brakes and Bruce Gordon racks. I have been riding it for 31 years. It has gotten a new headset, bottom bracket, and wheels (rebuilt with the original hubs) over the years (and the usual chains, brake pads, and cables). [Bruce Gordon was a custom frame builder in Petaluma, California who died in 2019. After a degree from the Art Institute of Chicago, he went on to study frame building with Albert Eisentraut before starting out on his own. He brought an artist’s creativity to an engineer’s field. If you ride a 29er or a gravel bike, you have him to thank for shaking up the industry; though he is not responsible for the proliferation of micro-markets – his Rock ‘n’ Road (the bike that came after mine) was meant to be ridden in all conditions.]

The Spot Brand has a 3-speed internally-geared Sram hub, Gates Carbon belt drive, Avid hydraulic disc brakes. I have had it for less than 6 years. It has needed only the usual brake pads (more often than on rim brakes), cable (shifter only, since there are no brake cables), and drive belts (less often than chains).

Tomorrow the Spot comes back out. Today I went to Costco and, as I pulled in, saw someone’s package fly across the parking lot. On the way out I saw someone’s giant TV blow over. The temperature and wind speed met at 25 (degrees Fahrenheit and mph… -4 C and 40 km/h). Gusts were 40 mph (65 km/h) . It was hard to keep the car on the road going home. I’m glad the bike was at home. By morning the forecast is for 5 degrees (-15 C). The wax-based chain lube on the BG doesn’t work very well at that temperature. Winter may have arrived.

What’s wrong with this bike?

Image from Competitivecyclist.com

How about this one? Maybe a closeup will help.

Image from Competitivecyclist.com

If you said “nothing”, you’re right. There is nothing wrong with these bikes…as long as you have about $6000 to spend.

On our FAQ page, we asked and answered the question “Is it cheating to ride an e-bike?” The world of e-bikes is changing. Some are 75 pound behemoths that drive themselves – until the battery dies. The two pictured above weigh around 26 pounds – about the same as my Bruce Gordon touring bike. Even when the battery dies, pedaling these bikes is no big deal. Where is the motor? you ask. Nearly invisible, in the rear hub, I answer. A close look between the cogset and the brake rotor and you might see the hub diameter looks a bit large – sort of like the 3 speed hub on my Spot Brand bike – but small enough to be virtually invisible.

the Bruce Gordon

E-bikes are now a lot like other bikes – available as commuters, cruisers, mountain, gravel, and road bikes. They can be pedal-assist, or can have a throttle like a motorcycle. Top speed is governed in multiple classes – you get to pick. With the motor not assisting, you can go as fast as you want (or can). Possibly the ultimate niche for them is the cargo bike. I was going to include some images, but there are too many variants – just search the term.

Would I ride an e-bike? No. It might be like a jet ski or a snowmobile or crack cocaine. Once you try it, you don’t want to give it up. Or so I’ve heard; never having tried any of them. Though the e-bike doesn’t have the societal costs of the others. A half-fast friend recently went bike shopping. His partner wanted an e-bike and bought one. He tried one and almost did it – but the Colnago won out and he couldn’t afford both. (But, as you see below, it was a false dichotomy – don’t tell him.)

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  Images from Colnago.com

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  Which is the e-bike?

This might qualify as bike porn – pictures of $5000+ bikes that most readers can’t afford and maybe have no business riding even if they can. We’ve all seen the stereotypical e-bike. Today, we just wanted to say the market has expanded. There are lots of choices. Just get out and ride; or do whatever it is that you love and will get you off the couch. (And no, I don’t have links for you to click to buy these and get me a commission. If you want to buy a bike, you’re on your own.)

As we said in the FAQ – if e-bikes get people riding who wouldn’t otherwise, we’re all for them. If they’ll get you out more, more power to you. If it’s just another expensive toy, don’t you have enough already?