The winter biking blues

Hibernating bikes outside Helsinki Central Railway Station

After a pretty good cycling year last year, this one has started badly. In early January I rode into work and there my bike has remained ever since. Firstly the temperatures went down and I just couldn’t bring myself to ride in temperatures of –15 to –20. Weak I know, but keeping your toes from freezing becomes such an issue it takes a lot of the pleasure out of it. Then after that cold snap it has snowed and snowed some more. The city is trying its best to clear snow from walking and cycling paths but there are plenty where they haven’t managed it yet and that would make my ride very slow and hard work. I’ll just have to keep XC skiing instead.

Winterized single-speed, spoke cards and all...

In the past this blog has been a little bit snarky towards my Helsinki fixed-gear brethren, what with their wildly spinning legs and off-the-peg-total-lifestyle-fad-adoption. But it has to be said, I’ve seen very few folks on their bike this last month, but of those I have seen a decent percentage have been on fixies; a massive increase on the percentage of summer riders using fixed gear bikes anyway. So big up da’ fixed gear winter riding posse.