Perhaps the most common question I get from winter cyclists these days is simple: Why don’t you ride a fat bike for your winter commute? It’s true, I don’t. I ride a built-for-winter commuter bike that has non-rusting parts and skinny tires. But fat bikes are pretty amazing winter machines, and I’ve ridden plenty of …
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I asked some winter-cycling friends from around the world to tell us what they love and, in some cases, hate about winter cycling in their cities. Bike lanes, plowing, bike parking, and reams of people riding in subzero temperatures: Here’s what they had to say in Winnipeg, Montreal, Minneapolis, Tilburg, and Oulu. Please subscribe to …
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In the midst of the polar vortex, where frothing meteorologists competed over cold weather hyperbole, I had my most memorable bike rides of the season. My home city of Calgary recently hosted the 7th annual Winter Cycling Congress, giving me a week of bike-focused learning and activity. The congress touched on myriad aspects of winter …
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When the temperature drops, riding a bike to work gets a tad more complicated. Especially in North America, where bike commuting is sometimes viewed more as an athletic pursuit than a simple transportation mode. That’s why, in this video, I look at two ways of dressing for bike commuting. Version 1 we’ll call Dress for …
At the tail end of last season, I did what I once thought I would never do: I bought a winter bike. For nearly a decade, I rode a crappy, 20-year-old single-speed mountain bike because, mostly, I feared riding a good bike. Winter in my city rust: salt, slush, muck and grime that eat components …
Read more “Here’s how my ‘perfect’ winter bike held up through its first (brutal) winter”
For years, I’ve ridden the same winter commuting bike, which I affectionately, but sometimes derisively, refer to as my p.o.s.: a crappy 20-year-old mountain bike whose best days were in the last century. While I do have a soft spot in my heart for this bike, that spot often grows hard. The machine is an …
Read more “My perfect winter bike really exists, and I just bought it”
“Postholing” is a new cycling verb I learned this week, defined to me as I lay prone in three feet of light powder at -26 C in the sub-Arctic taiga of northern Canada. For the record, the word describes what happens when your foot sinks deep into snow, as any showshoer (sans snowshoe) knows. When …
Read more “Here’s why people are riding bikes in one of the world’s coldest cities”
It’s not easy being an independent musician in Canada. The pay is low. Tours are difficult because of the long distances. The wolves sometimes stalk you. OK, that last one may only apply to one musician in Canada: Felipe Gomez, a Chilean-born bass player living in Saskatchewan who has, for the past several years, been …
Read more “The epic winter bike rides of this musician make your commute look paltry”