Winter's a time for learnin'

So I heard from this tall, super tall, bike-riding guy who knows (as far as I can tell) of what he speaks and generally doesn't just make shit up that a mutual friend of ours who also generally knows his winter biking shit from shinola that it might be a good idea to try this. You take a garbage bag and cut holes in it for your arms and your head/neck and wear it like a t-shirt overtop of a thin layer, and then you layer up overtop of that.

Huh, I thought, when I heard that. Maybe I'll try it. I sweat a lot (like, a lot) so maybe that'll help control the moisture. You know, like when you wear latex gloves inside your mitts to keep the mitts dry and your hands warm and which, for the most part, works pretty well. For me anyway. 

And the opportunity arose this past Saturday to ride toward a supper date with friends in Mitchell (100 ish kms from N-town). After a morning of other necessary toil I would gear up, hop on the old steed and see if I couldn't make it to St. Pierre (75 kms from N-town) there to be picked up by my beloved and taxied in to supper. 

By 12:40 pm on Saturday I was out the door and on the bike. It was a chilly one - about -22'C with a 15 - 20 km wind from the NW. If I was going to make it to St. Pierre I would be heading 40 kms north and then 35 kms west. Maybe, I thought.  Dinner was for 5. Maybe I was being optimistic, but it was worth a try. Any excuse for a ride.

I got to St Joseph (13 kms) in less than an hour and stepped inside the COOP to regroup and take a drink (Riding with a full face mask complicates the drinking thing. Another detail to sort out.). This is not speedy I know, but in the cold things slow down, quite a lot. My speedo told me I was averaging 15 km/h into the wind. I felt okay with this. It seemed sustainable to me. Huh. (That's foreshadowing. Do you see the long shadow of the bike?)

The bike stayed outside.

Another 7 kms north down the road I crossed the 14.

Did I mention that it was cold, and the wind was from the north?

After 7 more kms north I could finally turn east toward St. Jean at the double dip (there's a ford crossing going north, and then another one going east).

Looking south at the ford on the north-south road.

The slow dip (ford) heading east toward St. Jean. 

After a km or so of on and off again hike-a-bike I rode gravel in to St. Jean at 3 pm and stopped at the grocery for gatorade and jamjams.

Looking out the front door of the St. Jean grocery. I should have taken a pic of the jamjams
but looking back now I think was not at my sharpest just then. 

I left St. Jean after one large bottle of gatorade, some water, and two large oatmeal jamjams thinking that I'd fueled up right, but not thinking about how useful it might be to stop and take stock of the garbage bag liner experiment. My core was, in fact, feeling good. It must be working. Why unzip the unlayer only to discover what I thought I could feel? So I set out, more intent of keeping the stoppage time down and the riding time up. After all, I had to meet M in St. Pierre. 

Within minutes of riding away my arms felt stiff. Not muscularly stiff, but frozen like ice kind of stiff. I knew what this was about, but I determined that I'd keep riding, heat up again, and all would be well. Things would work out. Sometimes you've just got to grind away at it. That's one of my mantras I think. Like Boxer I keep thinking that if I just work harder, it'll be okay. Huh. 

A mile east of St. Jean I headed north for 7 kms again on the River Rd. 

Looking south along the river, the day was slipping away.

Looking east, the bike looks ready. Me? I'm having doubts.

The agreement between my beloved (the one with the car who was going to try to get us to dinner in Mitchell by 5 and who was assuming I'd be in St. Pierre to meet her at around 4:30. At this point, looking east to Hwy 200, 11 kms away, at 4 pm, I had to admit that St. Pierre was not going to happen. At least not by bike. So thank the lord for cell phones I texted M that I was heading for the intersection of the 200 and the 23, 14.5 kms away. 

Riding more or less with the northwest wind was better, much better. I could manage 20 km/h, but I was running out of gas. Some days you have it, some days you don't, some days it's cold, some days you decide to try something new. Sometimes that new thing you try doesn't work. 

We rendevoused at the 23 at about 4:35. After 56 kms in 3.5 hours (4 hours total time) I was done for the day. In the car I tried to unzip my wind layer, but I couldn't. The zipper stopped at the clump of ice the size of my fist in the middle of my chest. My wool jersey was welded to the wind layer by a ball of ice! What the hell! I broke off a piece of it and tasted it, thinking that it must be spilled Gatorade. Nope. Just water. Not even salty or sweaty. Just water - ice actually. 

I had expected that the garbage bag liner would reduce if not eliminate this sort of thing, but now I see that what happened was that the plastic liner kept my core temperature high which caused condensation to build up between it and the wind layer, which was not breathable enough to let the moisture out. It built up and froze. Huh. Makes sense now. Trap water between to vapour barriers and then let the -33 windchill have at it.

Lesson learned. No more double vapour barrier for me. The garbage bag liner may work for some, but for this sweat drippin' rider, it's no answer. Whatever the problem was in the first place. 

Epic-winter-ride-eh?!

The noughts trailed off into space like bubbles. His father had told him that astronomers had worked out that the total number of atoms in all the millions of stars they could see through their giant telescopes was ten with ninety-eight noughts on the end. All the atoms in the world did not even add up to one single googol. And googol was the tiniest little scrap of a thing compared to a googolplex. If you asked for a googol of chocolate-covered toffees, there wouldn't be nearly enough atoms in the universe to make them. (The Daydreamer - Ian McEwan)

As hopes his wont, his blessed imagination, his escape-from-the-spinning-wheel-domestic, FJR emails me early in the week to ask whether my Friday's open for a ride. (Let us make verbs where no verbs have verbed before; in our own image we will make them.) Could be, I ether back.

How about riding from N-town out toward St. Jean and Morris? he says, pelting his phone screen with fingertouch stain.

Could work, I hedge. Then, thinking all the while, Yes, I tap out back. Let's tap out. Let's bleed out into the white.

(I check the forecast afterward. Imprudent to be sure, but necessary. I mean, it's going to be a loop so it's going to be tough sometime, but when, and how much, that's the question. There could be sand anywhere.)

Next day FJR enthusiasms back that we could do an N-town - St. Jean - St. Malo - Dominion City - Roseau River FN - Letellier - N-town loop. About an Epic-eh worth of kms - 130.

Well all right then I shillyshally back. But I am in. It's a good idea. I just have to accept that it wasn't mine. I'm like this with FJR and his ideas.

And that's it until he shows up at the appointed time (8 am yesterday) and we ready ourselves. By 8:30 am we are on the bikes heading North, the wind from the SE.

20 kms or so in it becomes clear that doubling up on the booties is not going to be enough to keep FJR's feet in the way they are accustomed. I offer some chemical heat packs so we stop atop the Plum Creek.

At 10:30-ish we pull in to St. Jean to find our dream of a late morning poutine brunch dashed by the holidays. We settle for felt footbed liners from the COOPs, and cinnamon buns, Nutella, and coffee from the generous and incredulous women at St Jean Foods.

You can cross the Red at St. Jean without a bridge in winter. You can even stand there in the middle of the river changing the battery to your finicky/damn-near-useless VDO computer.

You cannot ride in winter without looking the lion - and hornifying all those you meet
(even with your reflective vestments).

We pulled in to St. Malo at about 1:15 and found the bar. Nice digs. (At least compared to A-town's public offering.) A good chipotle steak wrap with a side of poutine along with sudz of choice seemed right.

Dryclad and laded with the fruits of the earth - steak and potato - we lumbered out of town at 2 to find that the road to Arnaud said otherwise. We found the sand again, for the sand was, and the sand was in us, and the sand was god. We pushed through just the same, head down, legs rising and falling. 

Overtop of the Red this time, just west of Roseau River FN, we were feeling good.

Heading west two miles south of the 201 ...

... in imminent dark strobing snow ...

... low travellers among fanning monoliths ...

... winding on even so ...

... eyes flashing bright for home 

9-1/2 hours later, at 6, we were back inside in N-town, smelling T & M's sausage homefiring on the stove, we perogy-sizzled our toasted Guinness down-which we washed. 130 kms later. 

Hallelujah we are bums. 

Admitting that our lives are shaped by fictions may give a kind of freedom - possibly the only kind that human beings can attain. (The Silence of Animals - John Gray)