Right, the 1.8C difference is substantial in terms of human physiology and indicates a diminished level of comfort as the body fights to keep the temperature up.
I also found it funny how they mentioned that modern clothing keeps you warmer longer once you stop moving, then tried to minimize the significance of that. There's a reason "cotton kills" is a cliche. Modern fabrics, windbreaker shells, and engineered layers don't make a huge difference in warm, dry, active conditions - it's when things go sideways that they can be the difference between comfort and fatal hypothermia.
There are times when layering is not the way to go. One of them is heavy activity in extreme cold. Layers can cause moisture to freeze in bad places. Having lived in a place that often got down to -40, I was always most comfortable with a light synthetic shirt under a single winter coat. No complex layers. And waterproofing isn't needed as there isn't any water around.
I also and have gone to -46F and for me a thick wool sweater and wool felt coat makes huge difference. I can not even wear my wool sweater until it gets to -20F otherwise I will burn up :)
My record was -63f/-53c. But it isnt all that bad. There is literally no weather/wind below about -40. No snow. No wind. No clouds. Only strange stuff like ice crystals falling from a clear sku, and snow that squeeks like walking on styrofoam. -35 and windy always felt colder than -50.
I know someone who has three or four different thicknesses of pure lambswool jerseys for wearing while he's cycling, at different air temperatures. It never really gets all that cold down south here at 56°N and frankly I think spending ten minutes dicking about over which jumper you're wearing for optimal performance takes a lot of the fun out of it.
That said, I'm a fat 52-year-old, and I cycle in jeans and a T-shirt, and if I start to feel cold it's a sign I'm not pedalling hard enough and I should get the boot down a bit, burn some calories.
Does it take 10 minutes to choose? Back when I was commuting, I had different kit depending on the temperature, and it wasn't exactly hard.
>50F: Summer gear, and not much of it. I run hot, and there's no need to make it worse.
>20F: Add a thick sweatshirt and gloves
>0F: Add wool socks, long pants and a wool underlayer, a windproof outer shell, glasses, a hat, a thicker windproof layer over my gloves, and sometimes a scarf depending on how short I'd cut my beard.
>-20F: Similar, but with some extra layers over my core, and the scarf is mandatory.
>-40: Similar, more layers.
<-40: I know my limits. I've nearly gotten in serious trouble before when it's too cold out and I didn't plan for extra wind and a cold pocket near the river or having to walk because of a poorly maintained road or whatever. My gear wasn't especially high-tech, and I just called work and emailed my professors to let them know I wasn't going to make it.
Wind would have me reaching for wind breaking and insulation at higher temperatures.
It wasn't a 10-minute process by any means though. I'd pull out my phone in the wee hours of morning, see that it was X temperature on the homescreen, and plan accordingly. If he's just selecting between a few jerseys that should be even easier, right?
I didn't have a lot of choice. I was pretty broke and also couldn't afford to skip 2 months of work or school. Nowadays I'm a bit more careful with my time.
If you start doing longer rides you learn there are general temperature ranges and kit that's fine to commute in or ride an hour in traffic with a rucksack is very different from the kit you want on a 6 hour ride in the countryside. I generally have kit for 0-10, 10-15, 15-22, 22+°C. My 0-10 jersey will boil me alive after an hour cycling in 13°C but likewise my 10-15°C will risk hypothermia in 8°C. There's only so much layering you can do with cycling kit before it starts becoming restrictive.
At one point I was stationed at a military base in the north which got to -40, even -50 somewhat regularly in the winter. Part of the orders for extreme cold was "no bicycles". Too many cardio nuts were seen riding in inadequate clothing, especially lack of proper boots. The worry wasn't them getting cold, it was them falling.
A light jacket is all good when you are pumping out the calories, but take a fall and you are now sitting on the ground unable to move. At -40 you may have only minutes before life-altering cold injuries (lost toes). Add to that the darkness and snowbanks and you might not be found for hours... IF anyone is actually looking for you. Cellphone screen get tricky in serious cold. A person walking to work, which was still not advisable, would at least be wearing clothing warm enough to stand still in the cold.
The radio used to have public service announcements calling for people to keep blankets in their car. Not in the trunk. Within reach of the driver. Get into a wreck, trapped without heat, and that fleece blanket under your seat might save your life.
Much further north. I was working with the canadians. I saw weather phenomena that i have seen nowhere else, from sun dogs every morning to watching the northern lights and realizing they are actually in the southern sky.
I'm curious: I do cycle in jeans and a t-shirt while in the city. Up to 45 minutes I'm perfectly fine, but if I'm on the saddle for over one hour I really start to miss the chamois. What's your experience with that?
Seconded. Old-school leather saddles are pretty good for riding in street clothes. But, they do tend to require a slightly different fit - I never managed to run one with my normal saddle-bar drop - the Brookes really wanted saddle and bar at the same height and the nose of the saddle pointed up a bit. This was good for ~2 hours or so, never tried it for longer, since I had normal road bike with normal saddle for that.
My old bike had a Brooks saddle and I gave it to someone to use with no real expectation of getting it back, and sure enough I didn't get it back. They're still using it though :-)
I wish I'd swapped out the really nice saddle for a more entry-level one though.
No, their use of “solves for this” is with regards to disincentivizing an incredibly dangerous habit that randomly kills the most vulnerable bystanders in the vicinity at the rate of many thousands per year
You're misrepresenting. The article is about red light camera tickets and the GP is specifically describing how California got around this legal issue in the way they write tickets in their new camera pilot. They mention nothing of bystanders or their vulnerability.
As someone who has biked and rode trains to work for the past 30 years and continues to do so, I think requiring bike lanes whenever streets are repaved is a pretty awesome idea. ADA ramps are pretty great too, they are not just for disabled people, though the ADA lawsuit regime where private companies get sued needs to stop.
Yes I understand there is a funding issue, it needs to be solved by making the design and approval process more flexible and efficient, not by perpetuating the insane car-only design that kills pedestrians and cyclists.
Oh it's quite practical, many cities have done it. It just requires standing up to a bunch of selfish assholes who would rather pave over every bit of available space so they can drive around really fast in their giant SUVs while pedestrians and cyclists scurry about on the broken pavement of the 5% of the street right of way given to them, and get run over when they don't get out of the way of the SUVs fast enough.
What attitude do you expect from marginalized groups? Suffragists, slaves? Ring a bell?
If you think I'm exaggerating or something, I'm really not. You were born into a world already bulldozed for cars so you literally can't imagine an alternative reality. You're broken — can't see the world for what it is objectively.
Are rollerbladers marginalized? Cross country skiers ? It’s a hobby. This isn’t a civil rights movement, and it’s insulting to call cyclists “marginalized” like blacks , women and gays were.
To be honest with you I really don't give a shit about my reputation when it comes to this, I care about me and my kids not getting splatted by a speeding SUV when we dare to use the street, because I face this situation daily.
Where I live, our work has definitely been successful. The cities I bike in have been steadily improving their bike lane and pedestrian networks, and increasingly prioritizing them in plans and projects - though there is a long way to go.
> Civil engineers don’t tell your mayor or your highway commission what to build, their only job is to figure out how it can be built.
I would disagree. The engineers absolutely steer the space of available solutions. Caltrans is a prime example, I have personally met Caltrans engineers who might as well have stepped out of a time machine from 1970. This absolutely influences the priorities of both the state and the cities that depends on the framework it sets up.
And yes city politics is separately a major problem.
There is plenty of information about this in trusted sources, the way you're describing this is incorrect. Overcorrection and badly designed simplistic optics can make myopia worse in childhood when the eye is growing. Your eye is no longer growing.
Don't trust everything your doctor says verbatim, they often oversimplify and their information can be out of date. Give your doctor the benefit of the doubt but check it against other sources and use it to build a mental model.
If you liked Sheldon Brown (who was a treasure but the content is out of date now), definitely check out the Park Tool videos on YouTube. Calvin Jones, their director of education, recently retired after building an incredible library of instructional videos. As an amateur bike mechanic, I wouldn't have been able to build or maintain my bikes without Calvin's videos.
+1. I would add RJ The Bike Guy's youtube channel -- straightforward, down-to-earth, no-nonsense videos, may prove immensely useful if you have simple, traditional, cheaper-end bicycles at home, and only a basic set of tools. Excellent explainer; has similar "vibe" to Sheldon Brown's site IMO: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaAK2FaxQ2xiBbAUVZsvDYQ
That's exactly right. I have so many frustrating stories from local politics that go exactly like you described.
There is hope. Scott Wiener is a California politician who saw that these problems can't be resolved at the local level and got himself elected to the state legislature. He is smart about how he sets up the battles so he has had very good results incrementally improving California's zoning - and other things - by gradually restricting local zoning authority when it's abused.
We are not yet at the "convenience store at the subdivision corner" stage, but give him time.
Sorry, I love Technology Connections as much as anyone, but that's a ridiculous argument. Even people who drive less than 40 miles a day will occasionally need to drive 100 miles a day for two days back to back. That's not even a long distance trip, it's just driving around. With level 1 charging they are stuck and frustrated. With level 2 they're fine. Not to mention the hassle and mental energy required to plug in and out for every little trip.
For most people a 240V outlet is worth it. Not to mention it's at least 10% more efficient, which is quite significant and weird that Technology Connections didn't mention that.
You can use DC fast chargers to fill gaps as needed.
Also if you are always driving 40mi/day, you likely float with a battery percentage around 80%, leaving plenty of capacity for those consecutive 100 mile days with your standard overnight slow charge.
Again, this cannot be said enough, EVs are not gas vehicles, they do not refill like gas vehicles, if you apply gas vehicle logic to them, they look awful. But they are not gas vehicles, they don't follow the same logic and rules of gas vehicles. So you don't apply gas vehicle logic to them.
It's like handing chopsticks to an 18th century westerner, they'll stab their food with it and laugh about how stupid and useless they are. You need to learn and use chopsticks before criticizing chopsticks.
This whole thread (as always) is full of people stabbing their food with chopsticks.
Look, I don't care, I know there are strong opinions about how these discussions sway people one way or another. I'm as much of an EV technology fan as anyone, but I'm speaking from personal experience with this exact situation: if I didn't have a 240V charger in my garage, my EV experience would be garbage and I'd give up on it in frustration. I own one of the most common EVs, I have DC fast chargers in my area, I don't drive my EV that much during the week, but when I need to drive a bunch of short trips on the weekend, this exact scenario arises. I don't care what your theoretical model of an average EV driver looks like, I'm telling you that it doesn't match my reality and I am certain the reality of many others.
What's bizarre is that this should be incredibly non-contentious when it comes to EV adoption. By code, everyone in the US already has two phases at their panel and running a wire and outlet in their garage (or a weatherized cable to the outside) costs $100-150 in materials and a similar amount in labor. This is literally negligible in the broader scheme of the automotive economy. My humble suggestion to you is: save your breath, we're on the same side, raise your voice instead when it comes to demanding a sane EV industrial policy, regulatory policy, urban planning policy, removing subsidies for oil and gas industries, and the like.
That example doesn't make sense, because 100 miles back to back is only 200 miles. You've got about 80 miles from charging overnight those two days and another 200+ miles already in the battery. In that situation you're totally fine. After that there are superchargers of course.
I also found it funny how they mentioned that modern clothing keeps you warmer longer once you stop moving, then tried to minimize the significance of that. There's a reason "cotton kills" is a cliche. Modern fabrics, windbreaker shells, and engineered layers don't make a huge difference in warm, dry, active conditions - it's when things go sideways that they can be the difference between comfort and fatal hypothermia.
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