Today’s Da Funny comes from Treehugger, which seemed to have forgotten that 2010 was supposedly the hottest year ever! More Tips For Riding Your Bike All Winter
Brendan Kennedy of the Star has some terrific tips for winter biking that go beyond borrowing a balaclava from an anarchist friend.
Major riding tips include riding more slowly, anticipating stops, reducing tire pressure and turning safely:
In particularly snowy or icy conditions, lateral force will not take as strongly to the road, so make sure to slow down and turn with as much of your weight on top of the bike as possible (as opposed to simply leaning into turns). For left turns in busy intersections, Mohamed [bike educator at the Evergreen Brickworks] recommends getting off the bike and crossing by foot.
Dude, sure looks like it is, well, cold out there. Thanks for doing your part to keep it cold out there. It’s probably your fault that Florida is enduring record GHG induced cold and 34 have died from said global warming in…..Egypt. Wait, Egypt? And, yes, now that you ask, the alarmists are trying to push bike sharing as a way of charging for CO2 offsets. (Links via Tom Nelson)
Just for clarity, the original story by Brendam Kennedy was not about Saving Gaia from global warming, something she has survived countless times, but, about getting exercise, especially around the holidays, where we tend to overeat. You know that Treehugger is not looking at it like that, but, rather, as a way of reducing greenhouse gases.
Oh, and here are a bunch of lunatics singing, asking “what can you do with a climate skeptic.” Idiot lyrics here.
Hey Teach, this might explain alot about you, but I think GAIA would LOVE to have some recycled tree-hugger juice on her skin when they take a tumble while riding their stupid bikes in the ice and snow – and then end up oozing all of their sap all over the place helping GAIA replenish her energy sources.
hahahaha… love how the graphic itself calls those idiots riding bikes – COMMIE PINKOS!!!
hahahahahaha
Here’s another tip. Try not to get run down by the SUV drivers who don’t give a rat’s-a%& about climate change. Lol!
I understand climate alarmist road juice is a good insulator, Captain :)
I would think pairing bikes with cars on slippery winter roads would be a, well, Really Bad Idea.
Teach, so true- yet locally we have a very winding road (aptly named “Creek Rd”) that they LOVE to ride on, and usually in numbers. And boyo when the roads are slick, they do so love to take the whole lane up, mindless of the amount of traffic that they are holding up by their selfishness. Makes me long for a great big SUV!
Well here’s a news flash for y’all….. I am one of those riders.
When I lived “up north,” I rode in the winter through slippery roads.
I have been hit on my bike 3 times – once when being passed by one of those “great big SUV’s” that Trish likes. Once by a woman who turned into me across two lanes. I was riding an yellow bike and and orange shirt. She said she couldn’t see me. The last time was a guy who, at a traffic light, decided that his right to make a right turn on red overrode the physics that two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time, so he literally rammed me from behind after both of had stopped.
The cyclist’s dilemma is that if we ride and obey all the safety laws, people claim that we are “selfish” for riding at a legal pace and occupying a lane legally. If we try riding more aggressively, we are accused of not obeying the law and “getting what we deserve” when we get hit.
Well, guess what gang? I have the same legal right to the road as you do. I have the same right to stick my face into the wind, to climb hills, to marvel at nature’s beauty and to celebrate accomplishments of distance and time.
Most cyclists work very hard to respect the rights of other drivers and other motorists. This thread makes it clear that respect is not reciprocated.
And here’s another news flash for you….. the “pink patch” in the graphic that says “left wing pinkos?” It is a take off of a rant made by some overgeneralizing idiot who thinks that cyclists are only “left wing pinkos.” The rant is viral in the cycling community and the patch is worn to say “you don’t have a friggin’ clue.” The patch is a jab at ignorance.
I’ve ridden in Texas, and Oklahoma. I have ridden across the state of Florida in one day. I have climbed the mountains of North Carolina. I have ridden through National Parks. I have ridden along the Skyline Dive in the height of the beauty of fall colors. I have ridden through DC in all four seasons. The same for Maryland, Pennsylvania and Delaware.
I’ve ridden alone and in packs of over 500 people.
If you want to think that cyclists – or even cyclists that ride in the winter – are all “left wing pinkos,” then you really don’t have a clue.
end of rant.
No, I personally don’t think they are all left wing pinkos, I know some good conservatives who ride their bikes all year long around Raleigh, some stay on road, one does off-road all year long. I’ll do it myself now and then, just for some different exercise. Hard to rollerblade when it gets that windy. I’m just making fun of the alarmists pushing this as an alternative to driving, especially when they are talking about it being very cold.
Gitarcarver,
I dunno, even if the use of the name “PINKO” is a jab at ignorance, I wouldn’t dare call myself that.
I myself am not upset at all the cyclists. I was too for a while. Like Teach, we are upset at those who believe that we should all be cycling to save the world, and are bent to make sure that those who don’t cycle are put out. These people are happy when roads are removed for the sake of bike lanes only. These people are ones to demand subsidies for bike paths, lanes, and regulations.
gitar- my apologies – no disrespect was meant to cyclists. If you saw our roads, you would want to ride on them too. It’s a gorgeous scenic route, a designated bike trail. I hike with my dogs along the creek that the road follows, myself. And additionally, there is an actual path along the creek for a lengthy portion of the route. What bothers me is not so much the bikes that are ON the road, it’s the time of day (aka when I am trying to get to work) that irks me. At 7 AM, or at 5 PM, I don’t appreciate slow drivers either. Nothing personal, just a little impatience on my part!
I also love to ride year round, I just prefer to have a motor on my bike. Here in California one can usualy ride 300 days a year. The tips for riding in cold weather are actually pretty good. I do however hate to drive my car on highway 1 between Mill Valley and Stinson beach because of the Marin county bicycle a-holes who ride in the middle of the road and flip you off when you try to pass them. No one wants to get stuck behind you while you huff & puff up the hill doing 3 MPH.
Cycling in the winter is as much an alternative transportation as cycling in the summer is. What is important is the gear that you wear and use.
Teach, I know that you don’t believe that all cyclists are left wing pinkos. The fact of the matter is that the article from which that graphic was taken was only talking about cycling in the winter in Toronto, and had nothing to do with global warming or forcing riding down the throats of people. It was therefore distressing or something like that to see a comment saying how “bike riding idiots” are “Commie Pinkos.”
Somehow the wires got crossed and even here, cyclists that ride in the winter (or maybe even all cyclists) are labeled as “Commie Pinkos.”
Sorry Cap’n but your comment simply displayed the ignorance of which I spoke. Not everyone who rides a bike or who rides a bike year ’round is a left wing, tree huggin’, “pinko” and yet you were all to happy to label them as such.
There is a century ride (a ride over 100 miles) in Florida whose logo shows a cyclist going up a huge mountain with a huge incline. The funny thing is, that the actually ride’s highest point is a bridge that is an elevation change of about 60 feet. So when people see the logo on a shirt and talk to cyclists about how difficult that ride was when “they” made it, the cyclist knows they are full of it and demonstrating their ignorance. The same is true of the “left wing pinko” patch.
Trish, I can appreciate your point of the time of day. I really can. But don’t I have the right to legally ride a bike to work? I know it can be frustrating as I ride behind guys on bikes as well sometimes. But once again, the problem is if I ride on the shoulder or close to it (assuming there is a shoulder) people will wiz by me like a bat out of hell. That is how I got hit by the SUV. I was over on the side, and this clown sideswiped me. What is my protection other than to ride more toward the middle of the road and make the guy go around me by getting into the other lane (either the lane going the same direction or a lane coming in the opposite direction)?
Trust me that I agree with you that it can be frustrating. I think the term that got me was “selfish.” I find it somewhat ironic that cyclists are selfish for legally riding on a road and perhaps causing people not to be able to drive as fast as they want. I don’t see the selfishness on the part of the cyclist there. I see the frustration and the impatience, but selfishness? Nah.
hdrusty – yeah, cyclists are all aholes as you guys ride with open pipes so no one can hear, or carve canyons at 3 times the speed limit or do wheelies in traffic on interstates. You want to know why cyclists are in the middle of the road on climbs? Because it gives us room to get away from aholes that are cutting the apex of blind corners. If we are on the side of the road, we can only go down into a ditch or over the guard railing. In the middle of the road, we have the distance to get to the side of the road and out of harm’s way. If you want to know why we ride legally in the middle of the road, it is because people forced us there.
Gitarcarver-Have you ever been on highway 1 in Marin? It’s solid yellow for miles and extremly twisty. I don’t mind sharing the road and respect those who want to ride. I can get past them on my scoot, but when you have 50 cars behind you and you’re doing less then 10 MPH, then have some common courtesy and pull over for a minute and let them pass. If you don’t then you are an a-hole. I would pull over in my car if I were holding up traffic. “Keep right except to pass” applies to bikes as well. You can’t pick and choose the traffic laws that you want to obey.
In WA, if you are holding up traffic you can get ticketed. Doesn’t matter if you are on a bike or car or truck. If a bike is in the middle of the road, that prevents people from passing.
Gitarcarver, I did not call them pinkos. They themselves did with that image.
I am sorry you took this story and our comments with a more personal bent, but you should know us by now that while we may generalize in our eviscerations of certain groups of people and ideologies, we tend to only be focused at the more extreme members.