"Mike Jacoubowsky/Chain Reaction Bicycles"
<[email hidden]> wrote let it be known in
news:[email hidden]:
Quoted message said:However, that's not to say I haven't done my share of rides
below freezing. Coldest so far was 23 degrees, and we
usually get about 10-15 rides at or below freezing, and
perhaps 4-5 in the upper-20s.
A walk in the park!
December throuh February last year, the group I rode with was
determined to ride as often as possible (to lessen the pain of
starting from scratch in the Spring!)
This translated into a LOT of cold mountain bike night rides.
I'd say our average night ride in December/January was 8
degrees or less. Our 'record' night in Western Mass was 10
BELOW zero, with a windchill of -45. We enjoyed (?) an hour
and a half night ride which was then given front page coverage
by two local newspapers:
Group likes the 'tour de freezing'
01/17/2004
By DAVID A. VALLETTE Staff writer
Springfield Republican
GREENFIELD - Bundled at home, most people found little problem
dealing with the below-zero temperatures and wind chills of
about 40 below Thursday night.
There is one group, however, that, by choice, met the
cold, the wind and the dark head on, almost as a welcome ally
in pursuit of winter activity.
Members of this impromptu group took to the wilds of
Conway that night on one of several trailed areas where
elevation and snow add up to a good mountain bike experience,
even in the dark.
"When you live in New England you have to make that great
decision of how you are going to live your life," said Liam
O'Brien of Deerfield. He has decided, he said, that he will
not let winter, with its short days and long, cold nights, get
in the way of enjoying the environment. "The days are short in
winter, so it is either do it in the dark when the workday is
over, or do nothing," said O'Brien.
Leader of the night bikers is Robert G. Perry, owner of
Bicycles Unlimited on High Street, who has been making the
hills a frequent winter nighttime haunt for more than 10
years. It was sometime in the mid-1980s that he did it for the
first time. An amateur bike racer, he was looking for a way to
keep biking in the winter, and found his racing bike couldn't
handle wintered trails, so he took up mountain biking on
snowmobile trails. "People think you are making it up" when he
tells them he went out riding the night before, he said. "I
have to show them photographic proof," he said. He and the
other participants, a group that includes Chad and Stephanie
Castonguay of South Hadley, Jack Rice of Erving, Walter
Goodridge of Conway, Michelle Hurley of Northfield, Shawn
LeBlanc of Petersham, and Curt Bousquet of Putney, Vt., along
with O'Brien, use lights, proper garments and other equipment
to deal with the cold and stay safe. "We are very well
prepared," said Perry, who is known in the group as "Bicycle
Bob." The equipment includes a global positioning system that
uses satellites to be sure of location and avoid getting lost.
Perry said participants can't expect, however, not to feel the
temperatures. "No matter what you do, you are going to be
cold," he said. That is nothing to be alarmed about, he
contends, because it is little different than in summer when,
no matter what you do when you go outside, "you're going to be
hot." His cardinal rule is to "always feel your fingers, toes
and ear lobes to make sure you always have sensation." The
winter night bikers have become experienced in what to wear
while out riding to avoid problem cold, and often, said
O'Brien, the real problem is sweating. When you are sweating,
and you stop biking, that is when you are the most cold, he
said.
