Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Brrrr

The temperature took a serious dive last night. Yesterday was a comparatively balmy 30 when I rode home. This morning as I passed the same point, I glanced at the temperature displayed at the bank and it said 4!

I fully expected that it was going to get colder this week, but I guess I was hoping that the temperature would take a somewhat more gradual approach toward the single digits. My thinking was that I would then have some time to make some adjustments to figure out what works. Oh well, sink or swim sometimes provides a valuable lesson too.

Today I wore: soft shell jacket, mid-weight wool layer, mid-weight wool bottoms, MUSA pants, wind-blocker fleece gloves, wool balaclava, and a hat. My Lake Winter boots were comfortable with only a single layer of wool socks, (yeah!) My legs were not quite warm enough. My torso was a bit too warm, but it was windy and I could not find the right combination of zipper-adjustments to find the right level of comfort.

Yesterday on the way home, I was surprised to find an accumulation of ice on the northern shoulder of the Plymouth Avenue bridge. The bridge heads east and west. Evidently the north shoulder gets enough shade from the sun to protect the ice from melting. I was a bit surprised to hit the ice in the dark.

Note to self: find something better for pants. Go buy some studded tires

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ray-

For pants, in these latest frigid days, I've been having good results with 1 or 2 base layers of Woolie Tights and then an outer layer of my MUSA's.

What are you wearing for gloves? That's where I could use some fine tuning.

-Me

Reflector Collector said...

I think that I will have to get a larger pair of the MUSA pants to allow me to comfortably fit another layer under them. I may just hit up the local thrift store to pick up some old wool trousers instead.

For gloves I have been using a pair of Outdoor Research Windstopper fleece. I have a pair of nylon shell mittens that I carry just in case I need to warm up.

Find them at REI Linky-Link

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