Thursday, July 1, 2021

You may try to be a fair-weather bicycle commuter

 Len has been biking to work lately -- 19 miles round trip. Most of the time, the weather has cooperated.

When your preferred transport is an open-air vehicle, you become obsessed with the weather. Did they say it would rain today? Does it look it will rain? How hot is supposed to be? How hot does it feel? Alexa, what's the hourly forecast?

Then I was reading a Bicycling Magazine article, "6 Cycling Mistakes I've Made So You Don't Have To," by Fit Chick Selene Yeager. Mistake #3: Believe the Weather.

"Why, oh why is it still so difficult to predict the weather in the 21st century? And why, oh, why do I still believe said forecasts? (And I have four weather apps that I check obsessively before any given event.)"

I second that! I don't have four weather apps, per se, but I watch the morning news, ask Alexa, and wander outside to look around. Sometimes I'll pull up a weather radar online.

Yeager's lament is more about stubbornly going forth and then not finishing an event due to severely inclement weather. I have been thoroughly soaked by unanticipated rain plenty of times -- on the way to work, on the way home, on our Katy Trail trip -- but I've also had the opposite problem -- deciding not to get on the bike, thinking it will storm on me, only to spend a gorgeous day wasting gas in the car instead. Sigh.

Getting caught in the rain can be refreshing in a way. It can also be miserable, let's be honest. At least it comes with a rugged sense of fortitude. There is no positive feeling haven driven the car out of fear only to realize you could have biked.

The past week has been very rainy, and even still, Len biked every day. He did have to slog through rain a couple of times -- thank goodness for locker rooms.

Moral of the story? Do or don't trust the weather, and kudos to you if you biked somewhere today!

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