in which you ride only for the cool outfits and accouterment available. It's that winter necessitates the clothes for the cyclist.
I may be riding until the snow sticks, at which time I will be hanging the commute up until spring. Until then, proper clothing becomes an
essential tool to my survival. Survival is not hyperbole: it's freakin' cold out there. My wife has these visions of me dead in a ditch somewhere between our house and the office, having been run off the road by some East African immigrant who views traffic laws as suggestions, and freezing to death because no one could hear my faint cries for help ... "Help, I'm hungry. Get a pizza." (It's kind of funny when you think about it--I live in the city, and the only thing that could be considered a ditch is Minnehaha Creek that runs through town. I make an effort to avoid it so my wife can breathe a little easier.)
I used to be one of the guys who said, gear was a joke, that I could do everything in jeans and tennis shoes that sports enthusiasts perform in their high-tech gear. My term for the gear is "granola tech," worn by a strange mixture of folks living the granola lifestyle while sporting fancy UV-protective and quick-dry clothing. The more I see people sporting granola tech, the more I'm convinced I would not bend to such silliness. Sitting in a comfy climate-controlled airport and watching people line up for travel, wearing zip-off, quick-dry pants and sweat-wicking shirts, I think, "What's next? Women wearing yoga pants to go to the grocery store?" When Cynthia and I go snowshoeing, I'll wear a pair of jeans, no hat or gloves, and she always asks if I'm cold. My reply is "Yes, aren't I supposed to be?" After all, what would TR do? He didn't have fancy sweat-wicking, waterproof, breathable Gortex layers of base and shell. Hard conditions are to be met with grit and determination and survived, not as a cozy jaunt through the snow and ice, holding hands and singing songs. Seriously, I crack myself up sometimes.
But what if I'm riding to work, rather than taking an afternoon and slogging through the deep snow at some backcountry retreat. Yeah, it's ok to act tough when I know that later I can warm myself by a nice fire in a cozy cabin with my beautiful wife and my dogs, drinking a hot beverage to wear off the cold. Riding to work means no fire, no snuggling (well... maybe with Gebert), and certainly no dogs, Riding to work means being at work, which I've established is a place I don't really want to be. I go there because they give me money. So if I'm going to have to sit in a cube all day, I sure as hell don't want to be cold! And that's exactly what happened when I road to work a few weeks ago: all day in the office I was cold. I experienced a strange sensation while freezing in the office: my back fat is colder than the rest of my body, like a big slab of bacon taken out of the refrigerator and placed on my lower back. I sat at my desk having some out of body experience with a section of my body ... very disturbing.
So that's it. That's my excuse for caving and buying into the granola-tech meme. I want my back fat to be as warm as the rest of me.
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