The New Trailer - And My First Fair-Weather Fall

WEATHER THERE: light rain, 10C, calm wind

WEATHER BACK:cloudy, 14C, 9 km/hr crosswind

On one of my days off last week, I turned weeks of indecision into action: after researching the relative pros and cons of various ways to transport my child with my bike (rear-mount child seat, front-mount child seat, trail-a-bike, and single-child trailer), I bought a single-child trailer from Mountain Equipment Co-op. Though I've used it very little so far - just a short test ride last Thursday (short because of the unfortunate Brazilian that prevented me from biking much at all last week!), another short ride to the park on Sunday, and to-and-from daycare today - it's been great! It's easy to attach and detach from my bike, it's much slimmer than my double trailer and that makes it lighter and less likely to get caught on a curb or on the door frame going in and out of storage, it's more comfortable for my daughter because she's more cocooned in it, and it's sturdy as anything.

Case in point: when taking it for a test ride on Thursday, it had been raining that day and I approached a part of the road where I had to get up onto the sidewalk. There was a big, deep puddle covering the edge of the road where it met with the curb. When I tried to ride up over the curb onto the sidewalk, my wheel caught on a deep pothole that was covered by the puddle, and I was thrown from the bike. I tumbled off, landing on the sidewalk (thankfully not in the puddle!), my bike fell over, and as soon as I landed I looked back in horror to see if my daughter was okay. Sitting calmly in the trailer, she looked at me with some semblance of surprise and said, "You okay, mommy? Mommy, you okay?" The trailer hadn't budged an inch.

I was okay - just a small scrape on my leg, nothing serious, and surprisingly not even a scratch on my hands or a bruise anywhere else. So I mounted back up and we continued on our merry way, none the worse for wear. If she were on a trail-a-bike or in a child seat, she would likely have sustained some kind of injury - or at the very least, been scared by the fall and perhaps developed an aversion to biking with me. Thankfully I went with the trailer instead! No injury, no scariness - just a fun ride.

I suspect that the Velcro used to secure the screen and rain cover will wear out sooner than I want it to, making it impossible to close after some use, and that might prove to be an annoying issue. I might have to sew snaps into the material when that time comes. However, that point hasn't come yet and hopefully won't come for a while. This trailer will hopefully get us through some winter commuting without issue - and, given its performance so far, I'm looking forward to it!

Week 36 - Day Five: Spring Spills

BIKE: Mike
TIME THERE: 25 min.
TIME BACK: 24 min.
WEATHER: overcast, 3C, 7 km/hr tail/crosswinds there; partly cloudy, 8C, 9 km/hr crosswinds back.
WHAT I WORE: yoga pants, t-shirt, sweatshirt, running gloves (gloves in panniers on the way home)
NOTES:

This always happens after any kind of hiatus from biking: it's very difficult to motivate myself to bike again. When I get used to being lazy and taking the car, I find it takes a while of consistently biking before I wake up wanting to bike again. So, of course, this morning when the alarm went off I started dreading the ride. "Maybe you can just drive today. You're so tired. Don't you deserve a break?"

I forged a compromise with myself: "Okay, tell you what, you can drive your daughter to daycare instead of taking the bike trailer, but then you have to come back home and bike to work from there." Sigh - FINE! I don't get to be entirely lazy . . . just a little.

The good news is that the ice that remained on the bridges yesterday had fully melted by this morning, though in one place it left behind enough of a pile of sand to make me skid a bit as I went over it. That got me thinking: I am terrified of falling in the summer. Sure, I fell a few times in the winter, but I was always dressed head to toe in impact-cushioning winter gear. If I fall in the summer, I'll probably hit the ground harder since I'm travelling faster and don't have any snow or ice to cushion the blow. Also, with more exposed skin I'm likely to earn myself some road rash: a wound I might actually have to clean with a wire brush (please, pause to imagine how painful that would be) in order to get the embedded stones out of my skin. Ridiculous! I hope that never happens to me.

Anyone out there have any good stories about bad non-winter falls?? I'd love to hear them!! Post them in the comments!

Week Twenty-One - Day Three: Damages

BIKE: Mike
TIME THERE: 29 min.
TIME BACK: 28 min.
WEATHER: overcast, -13C, 7km/hr wind there; overcast, -10C (-16C with wind chill), 11km/hr wind back.
WHAT I WORE: warm-up pants, turtleneck, waterproof shell, lobster gloves, balaclava
NOTES:
A fine mist descended on my fair city this morning, causing a light layer of frost to develop over everything. It enveloped the scenery in a mysterious, eerie beauty. It also caused the roadways to be just a little bit slicker today. This didn't have much bearing on my commute - and I'm thankful for that! - though it may have been a contributing factor to my sixth bike-commuting fall, which occurred on my way to work this morning.

I was already on campus, so my ride was nearly over. Just having come up the High Level Bridge hill and walked Mike up the stairs onto campus, I started rolling along on the sidewalk heading towards the parking lots on the eastern edge of the campus. Just as I began picking up speed, I noticed that I was coming up behind a pedestrian who was walking in the middle of the sidewalk. I rang my bell, though I wasn't sure if he heard me, so I started slowing down so I wouldn't crash into him as I tried to ring the bell again. Just as I began braking, the back tire hit a patch of ice so that when I hit the brakes the front wheel slowed down but the back wheel didn't. This made the bike skid sideways and I was thrown to the ground. The sound of me hitting the concrete (and, knowing me, probably saying, "Fuck!") got the pedestrian's attention, and he turned around with what looked like an expression of horror and asked if I was okay. When he turned around, I thought I recognized him as an esteemed professor in my department. Ugggghhhh. Embarrassed, I quickly hopped to my feet, said I was fine, and immediately got back on the bike so I could pedal past him and pretend it never happened.

During the remaining short ride from there to my building, I did a mental scan of my body to check for injuries. Remarkably, just about nothing was sore. Not my hip or shoulder that hit the ground, not the leg where I now have a decent-sized tear in my pants, not my neck from the strain of ensuring my head didn't hit the ground. The only thing that seemed worse for wear were the heels of my hands, which felt bruised and tender, but that was it. I breathed a sigh of relief that I've made it this far, and that I've fallen as much as I have, while garnering no serious injuries. That's incredible! Six falls in five months of commuting, and the worst injury I've received has been a sprained finger (which, by the way, is still healing several weeks later). At this point, falling doesn't even seem like that big a deal! It doesn't even hurt! Not that I like falling, mind you, but it just seems a whole lot less scary than it did when I first started. Then again, if it were the summer and I were in shorts and a t-shirt, that might be a whole different story - but without ice, it is my sincerest hope that I won't be falling anymore!

The tear in my warm-up pants.



The bruises on the heels of my hands.

Week Fifteen - Day Three: Victory!

BIKE: Mike
TIME THERE: 40 min.
TIME BACK: 40 min.
WEATHER: overcast, -20C, 4km/hr wind there; a few clouds, -15C (-22C with windchill), 11km/hr wind back
WHAT I WORE: Baffin "Chloe" boots, thick wool ski socks, thermal underwear, MEC Watchtower fleece pants, turtleneck, fleece mid-layer, waterproof shell, balaclava, ski goggles, lobster gloves
NOTES:
Fuck yeah, I biked to school today! In frigid temperatures! On snowy, icy roads! And you know what? I'm damn proud of myself. Sure, it took 40 freakin' minutes to get there, and I was dressed like a yeti, and I faced some challenges (see below), but I made it, I survived, and I felt really good about it.

So, the challenges - those included:

1. Lack of sleep: This is hardly a new one, being a single parent to a not-quite-toddler who's perpetually either going through a growth spurt, teething, or both. Still, I was already tired yesterday but still didn't get to bed til sometime after 10:00 pm because of my annoying 9:00 pm second-wind. Then my daughter was up at 2:00 am, and after taking care of her (changed a diaper, got her some milk, gave her some Tylenol for the teething pain), I had difficulty falling asleep. Then she was up again sometime around 6:00 am, and the alarm went off at 6:45 am. If it weren't for the ride in the cold, fresh air, I would feel a whole lot less awake right now!
2. Snowbanks: Thank you, City of Edmonton, for treating bicycle lanes as convenient space to pile up the massive snow banks that accumulate when you clear the roads. At one point I ended up having to stop, get off my bike, and actually carry it over a ~4ft. high snow bank that completely blocked access to the bike lane. Then I had to bike on the road in one of the tire ruts because the icy, snowbanky bike path was too treacherous for me to feel confident riding on. Thanks, city!
   
3. Falling: Yes, I did fall - ONCE - and it really wasn't a big one by any stretch. What happened was that I was biking on the road, in one of the tire ruts, through a side street in the neighbourhood of Oliver, when I heard a car come up behind me and slow to a crawl because I was taking up his lane. Feeling bad about this, I tried drifting out of my rut and over to the more snowy, icy side of the road so he could pass me. Unfortunately, trying to drift my way out of an icy rut did not meet with success, as the sides of my tires were unable to bite into the "wall" of the rut and therefore I tipped over onto the icy, snowy part of the road that I was intending to move into. I was going about 5km/hr at that point, and the car behind me had plenty enough space and was also going slow enough that stopping for me was not a problem at all. Still, this fall was a bit embarrassing, added time to my ride, and left what feels like a lovely little bruise developing on my right hip. Nothing serious, though, and I've learned my lesson well: later on in the ride, when another car came up behind me as I rode in a tire rut, I said under my breath: "fuck it", and stayed exactly where I was. If the car wanted to pass me, he could go around me, I wasn't going to try pulling over again!
4. Breathing: Such a simple thing, really, and yet condensation can be quite a bitch and interfere with some pretty basic and important functions such as seeing and breathing. With my helmet on, my ski goggles pressed down against the bridge of my nose and made it nearly impossible to breathe through my nose at all. That's fine, I usually pant and wheeze my way to work anyway, so mouth-breathing it is! The problem is that the condensation from my mouth-breathing would gather on my balaclava and freeze, which then made it much harder to breathe through. As more ice built up on the balaclava, it got harder and harder to breathe through, and by the time I got up the hill at the end of the bridge and carried my bike up that flight of stairs onto campus, I felt like I was suffocating. I pulled my balaclava up and gave myself a minute to breathe freely, unhindered by the frozen fabric that fit snugly over my mouth. Around the same time, my ski goggles had become virtually impossible to see through because of condensation building up on the inside and making them foggy. I rode on for another block or two being able to see with only one eye, but this felt too dangerous so I finished off the last couple blocks of my ride with the goggles around my neck and ice quickly accumulating on my eyelashes. I'm not sure what other cyclists do about the condensation issue, but it's definitely a problem for me! Perhaps if I run into another winter cyclist soon, I'll try to ask them about it.

I've learned that just because there might be other cyclists out, even in this weather and on these roads, it doesn't make my efforts any less triumphant when I face down this unknown beast of winter biking and win. I might be going slowly, but I'm doing it. I might feel pretty sketchy trying to navigate the mini-moguls of icy ruts that make the roads so difficult to bike on, but I'm surviving it. And I might be terrified that my poor lightweight road bike is going to break going over this frozen, jarring terrain that is much better suited to a shock-absorbing mountain bike, but so far Mike is holding up. And all this means that I can keep on keepin' on.

I just wish it didn't take so long! The bike ride itself has gone from 25 min. in the summer to 40 min. now, and add to that the 10 min. or so it takes to get changed into my winter weather riding clothes, it makes the commuting longer than I wish it was. Alas! It still beats paying $12 for parking every day.

Week Thirteen - Day Four

BIKE: Eastwood
TIME THERE: 27 min. (woo hoo!!)
TIME BACK: 31 min.
WEATHER: clear, -1C, 4km/hr wind there; light rain, 3C, 9km/hr wind back.
WHAT I WORE: yoga pants, turtleneck, waterproof shell, double gloves, scarf
NOTES:
This morning, the road conditions didn't seem quite as crazy as they did on Monday. The main roads are mostly clear now, and the scary uneven snow and ice on the side streets has mostly been compacted down into ice with only a bit of crunchy snow on top in some places. On Monday, the entire shared-use pathway along the High Level Bridge was a thick sheet of uneven ice, which made the slight hills on each side of the bridge quite treacherous. Even the flat middle part of the bridge was brutal, given the need to negotiate around other cyclists and pedestrians on such slippery terrain. Now, though, it would seem that the bridge has been largely cleared of that ice build-up and sand has been put down for added traction, making the ride down the hills feel a little less like meeting certain death.

I've found that cycling this week has been so much harder than before. I expected the arrival of snow would slow me down and make everything harder, but perhaps I didn't realize how much of a difference it would make. Or, at least, that the snow alone would make such a difference - I expected it would be a combination of snow, freezing temperatures, and high winds that would make winter commuting so hard. It turns out all I needed was the snow to feel discouraged! Now when that wintry trifecta does come into effect, as I'm sure it will sooner than later, how the hell am I going to handle that? I'm already asking myself if all this is worth it, and I'm only facing snow and ice right now.

But, boy howdy, on the way home everything got a whole lot worse. When I stepped outside I discovered it was raining. "Yay!" I thought, "All this rain is going to wash away a lot of the snow!!" I hopped on Eastwood and began cycling home, grateful for the mild weather that allowed it to rain this late in November. The traction seemed pretty good everywhere - it's true, it seemed the rain was washing away a lot of the ice and snow, and I began feeling optimistic about my biking adventures. I was making good time, I felt in control, and even despite getting increasingly water-logged I was having a really fun ride!

Until I got to Glenora. This is the expensive neighbourhood I bike through that boasts gorgeous old estate homes and wide, curvy, low-traffic roads that have made for a dreamy scenic route for me these past few months. I was sailing through this neighbourhood as I had been throughout my whole ride, but this time as I began curving slightly to the left along with the road, the tires slid out from under me, and anyone within earshot could hear the profound words "Shitty nutballs!" escaping my mouth. Eastwood and I fell to the ground, and the two of us slid to a stop a few metres from where we fell.

I was stunned. I looked around at the road to see what obvious patch of ice I managed not to see before hitting it, and found nothing but the shiny black ashphalt that was to be found everywhere else in this rainy weather. There was no obvious ice build-up anywhere, and even as I righted myself my feet slid around underneath me on ice that was so thin and transparent it could not be distinguished from the pavement. I suppose this is what they call "black ice". I should be very familiar with this as a prairie girl, but it felt as though I was seeing it for the first time.

I gingerly swung my leg back over Eastwood and slowly began pedalling again, trying carefully to maintain my balance on this misleading black ice. Even as careful as I was, it didn't take long before the road curved again and the tires gave out underneath me. I fell again, this time dislodging the plastic cover that is supposed to protect the front chainring and twisting the left hand-brake out of whack. I twisted the brake back into line, put the broken plastic ring on my handlebars, and tried to figure out how the hell to get home.

I knew I couldn't stay on that road. I already feared one finger might be broken (the middle finger on my right hand - the perfect flipping-the-bird finger, which one clearly cannot afford to lose!). What more damage would I do to myself if I kept falling? At first I tried biking in the extreme edge of the road, in the slushy rain-soaked snow, but I wasn't sure this was much better than riding on the black ice. I got off and walked the bike over to the sidewalk, found it wet but not too slippery, and proceeded to follow the sidewalk up to the nearest major road.

But wait a minute - what if the major road had black ice on it, too? At least on the side street, when I fell there was nothing around for me to fall into, no cars to hit me or run me over. On the major road, though, there were lots of cars - speeding cars. So the likelihood of falling might be lower, but the consequences of any fall were potentially much worse. What to do?

I kept to the sidewalks along the major road for a while, but these were pretty patchy with slushy snow and half-melted ice. Ultimately, I took to the major road. The traction seemed fine, but I was pretty scared the whole time. Also, I kept getting splashed by cars and being forced to ride through big puddles because I had to keep so far to the right. I got home safe and sound, sticking to the main road, but the whole rest of the ride I worried over what I would do about the ride tomorrow. Sure, it's slippery now with the rain - but what about after it's had a chance to freeze overnight? Won't everything be black ice tomorrow morning?

To be safe, I'm taking Mike tomorrow with his studded tires. And I'm riding slow. And sticking to the side streets in case I do fall. The prospect of the ride tomorrow is scaring me already, but as a psychologist and a former horseback rider I know the worst thing to do after a fall is to avoid riding again. I just have to get back up in the saddle and keep going, figuring this bike-commuting thing out one bump, bruise, and scrape at a time.

Oh, and by the way, within a half-hour I was able to bend my finger again, and now it's just the knuckle that's sore to the touch but nothing looks out of place with it. I'm able to make a fist with some discomfort, but I'm sure at worst it's just a sprain. I'm pretty lucky, I think! I've fallen four times since starting my bike-commuting challenge and I've never been hurt. Knock on wood!!

Here is an early picture of my still-developing injuries:

The darker areas are bruises, and the red areas (i.e., lower hip, inner thigh on far leg) are parts that will become bruises in the next 1-2 days. I suffer for my art!!

Week Seven - Day Two

TIME THERE: 35 min.
TIME BACK: 33 min.
WEATHER: light snow, -3C (-8C with windchill), 15km/hr wind there; light snow, 0C (-4C with wind chill), 15km/hr wind back
WHAT I WORE: scarf, waterproof shell, turtleneck, cotton gloves inside running gloves, long underwear under yoga pants, winter boots.
NOTES:
There was a layer of perhaps 2 cm of fresh, fluffy snow on the ground this morning, and the white stuff continued to fall as I made my way to school. I dropped my daughter off at daycare using the trailer, and unlike yesterday, did unhitch the trailer and leave it at home for the rest of my trek to school. It's amazing how much of a difference it made in weight - I easily went back up to my usual 14th gear after struggling along in 13th gear with the trailer.

Despite the lack of trailer this time around, I still faced some daunting challenges. This was my first time riding on pavement that was completely covered in snow - this wasn't a light dusting, this was covered. I have ordered spiked winter tires for my bike, but they may take up to three weeks to arrive. In the meantime, I'm stuck with my road slicks. ROAD SLICKS! These are tires meant for minimal traction and maximum speed - neither of which are desirable in road conditions such as these.

I had a few near-misses as I biked through the neighbourhoods closest to me, as the streets I had come to know in bareness now seemed foreign and mysterious under their blanket of snow. I couldn't see or anticipate the familiar cracks and potholes, and managed to skid out a bit because of my inability to avoid them. As I biked along a short stretch of major roadway I felt like I was going to die - there was more traffic than usual, less road space for me, and where I normally biked (close to the curb) the road had 4 cm deep of brown, mushy snow-and-dirt stew that made me feel like my bike was floating precariously over it. "Screw this!" I thought, and took to the sidewalk. "It's only for a couple blocks, anyway."

Getting into the neighbourhood bordering the north side of the river valley, the trouble began in earnest. Here's where I encountered declines, and curves, and curvy declines. Now, when the pavement is clear, declines mean: Yay! Fun! Fast! And I don't even have to work for it! Wooo! When there's 2 cm of loose snow over black ice, these declines spell TERROR. That was the case today. I hit a patch of black ice going slowly around a bend in the road and my wheels gave out from underneath me, throwing me off the bike. I landed on my left upper arm and shoulder. "Yay, my first fall!" I thought, "and it wasn't even that bad!" It felt like I'd just been through an inevitable rite of passage, and it felt good in some strange way. The second fall, on the other hand, sucked. I let fly a little f-bomb action as I went down on a patch of black ice at the bottom of a decline where the road curved to the left. There was a car right behind me and thankfully it was going slow enough that it didn't have to slam on the brakes when I went down in front of it. Just in front of me, there was a car on the curb with its hazard lights on and a hub cap in the middle of the road. Okay, so I fell, but maybe I wouldn't be any better off if I were driving. That made me feel better. Having to fix the chain and the rear fender, both of which had come off in the fall, was less comforting.

I managed to make my way across the High Level Bridge and onto campus without further incident. I did feel sorry for my poor bike, though. It's been a reliable little beast for me these past few weeks, and I felt like I was abusing it today. Sorry, Mike the Bike, I'll be better to you from now on. I promise. If only I could say the same to myself - my left shoulder and hip are bruised and aching, my triceps are sore, the palms of my hands are bruised, and I have a nasty bruise on my inner right thigh from landing on the bike's frame both times, since both times I fell to the left while making a left turn. So: sorry, Body, I'll be better to you from now on. I promise.

On the way home there was even more snow than in the morning, and it was a dangerous mix of slush, ice, and snow given that the temperatures were a bit warmer. While there were some bits of pavement that were bare and wet, the vast majority of the ride gave my slick tires nothing to bite into for traction. I skidded and nearly fell throughout the entire ride, as I gripped the handlebars til my knuckles turned white. I managed not to fall, which is great, but I had several near-falls where I had to drop one or both feet off the pedal(s) to stabilize myself.

I think an executive decision is in order: wait until the snow clears away until I ride again (and it's supposed to warm up over the next couple days, so that's not that big a deal). I can't ride like this, it feels like I'm acting out some death wish and since I'm no Freudian I'm not interested in that. Further, I won't ride in the snow until I have my winter tires. Otherwise, I'm just asking for trouble. And, really, the whole point of this commuter challenge is to keep doing it the whole year, not to injure myself so severely in the second month that I can't ride anymore!

Decision made. Now I just have to sit back and wait til my tires come in and/or the snow clears up! SIGH! How boring!!