I must say a few words about a post on Copenhagenize that ruffled my feathers. I'm a huge fan of Copenhaganize, but the internet is all about criticizing people for every little imperfection, so I'm taking issue with one small part of one post in the Copenhaganize archive. The post is called "Cycling in Winter in Copenhagen" and starts out nice enough until this part:
"And no bicycle studs were harmed in the making of this blogpost. I never see them here and wouldn't possibly know where to buy them.
...
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Ladies and gentlemen, my winter wheels are back! After choosing not to ride on Monday due to road conditions, I set out Tuesday morning enthusiastically, but my enthusiasm was short-lived.
The edges of the streets and the bike lanes were still full of slush, forcing me to take the lane. The rising sun created massive glares on the wet roads and snow, making it hard for me to see and surely hard for drivers to see me.
I almost turned around to ride back home, but instead I turned on a shady side street with...
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Here is a secret to winter bike commuting: it's not that bad. If you look closely at the individual days that make up winter, you'll see that most of them are pretty nice. Sure, sometimes the windchill is -20 and sometimes a foot of snow falls, but the time between the extreme days is perfectly fine for bike commuting.
This week served as a good example. After Monday's light rain, the temperatures fell but stayed above 0. On Wednesday morning my commute temperature was 7 degrees. Sounds cold, right? I wor...
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It's that time of year again: legions of bike commuters are gearing up for winter and considering whether to buy studded tires. Well, okay, maybe just five or six of you.
So should you get studded tires?
I asked myself that question for weeks last year. My dithering abruptly ended on the morning my bike slipped from under me and I landed on my butt.
Many winter cyclists in Chicago seem to go without studs, sticking to the major routes that are well-plowed, but I prefer side street and the Lakefront Trail, whic...
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