This Space for Rent

Not completely weatherproof

I went out for a ramble this afternoon that I first stretched into a trip up to Sandy for some donuts, and then stretched again to round up to 100km (I wanted to do 200km today, but I didn’t actually make it out the door until noon, so that grand plan was nipped in the bud before I even had the chance to realize how stupid it was.) It was cold today (starting at 26°F, then going up to about 36°F) so I piled on the layers, with a pair of lobster claw gloves (some no-name REI glove; they are warm, but not completely windproof, so my hands sweat and then get quite cold when I plunge down the mountain) a shortsleeve shirt, shortsleeve jersey (I found a really cheap actual-bicycle-jersey at an online sale, and it’s much cozier than the Ibex outerlayers I normally wear. This is distressing), armwarmers, el-cheapo windbreaker (it doesn’t need to be much if it cuts the wind,) my chopped in half pink Rivendell neck-tube-thing and my usual collection of long underwear, two layers of socks, and regular walking-around-in-shoes.

The gloves were fine. The windbreaker+stuff underneath were fine (except that my arms sweated and got chilly every time the east wind blasted me when I was in the shade.) The head and ears were also fine.

My feet, on the other hand, were not fine. Not not fine enough to get frostbite (there was enough windbreaking inside the shoes to prevent that) but by the time I got home they were doing a pretty good imitation of cheap wooden clogs until I just sat down and let them slowly warm up in the air.

And it’s supposed to get down to 18°F tonight, which means it’s not even going to break freezing until around noon (and then a rain system moves in, so it will get (relatively) warmer and rainier as the evening approaches.) I was thinking that tomorrow might be a good fall-back day for another R200, but, um, I am fond of my toes and I don’t really want to see if another 4 hours (or 5, or 6, depending on the enthusiasm of the headwinds) is enough to make them freeze solid and fall off with happy little tinkling and crashing noises.

I’ll probably just do another 100km in the afternoon, then see if I can sew up some footguards to take the place of the more sensible winter shoes that a more well-heeled cyclist would buy. (At least I’m over 700 miles for the month, so being lazy tomorrow and monday would not be the end of the world.)