Be careful what you wish for. You might be cursed by having your wish granted.
I wish it was not so #$%@!! cold and annoyingly snowy here in Toronto. Current temperature -8, today’s high -4 POMP 30%. Next week’s forecast features all the daily highs below zero. My wish will be granted… in four months.
Ya know Kevin, it is considered standard practice to attach either a C or an F to a temperature reference on a message board or comment thread with a pan-English audience and/or participation that includes Americans. Of course, you already know that, and I’m sorry for calling out your contrivance, but considering that this is an American site I think your refusal to do so is a little rude and arguably imperialistic. I like you, I enjoy your postings and your quirkiness, but would it kill you to throw us a C?
Who cares, man. Aren’t there only two tempuratures to really care about in relation to cycling: cold enough for snow to stick and then form/ maintain ice on a given route; and NOT that cold. I assume that anyone North of the Mason-Dixon Line is in the former category during this time of year. AND you can infer which one he meant (he’s in Toronto not Igloolik).
I’m not asking for the conversion. Us Americans can do the math ourselves. Seeing how he complains bitterly about temperatures barely below freezing I do need a contextual reference because I have a hard time calibrating how a Canadian can complain so bitterly about 31 F temperatures. Two simple little keystrokes is all it takes to properly contextualize the daily references. Also, the Mason-Dixon line isn’t exactly like that old Bugs Bunny cartoon that actually delineates anything. Snow doesn’t magically turn to rain when an Alberta clipper crosses the line sweeps the east coast. D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York all have virtually identical climates.
Ha, calling metric Imperialist is pretty funny. Americans are among the last users of the Imperial measuring system (less of a system than a social history of how to avoid comprehensive units). If you know someone’s posting from Toronto, I’m sure you’ll work it out. Most of my Stateside friends get scared of anything below 47o, let alone 32o (yeah, some of us know Fahrenheit, we just think it’s funny).
Don’t forget the effect of wind chill on a cyclist – Let’s be careful out there, people!
See, that’s just the point. Not one person from southern Canada has honestly forgotten to consider American perceptions since we kicked your ancestors out of America for being loyalists. It’s all you think about.
That’s true, us Loyalists did leave the Excited States. After we burned the capital in 1812 . Although to be truthful, at that time it was pretty much all Britan and / or France coming down from the North albeit with some Natives.
Yeah, you Canadians may have come down and burned the capital, but it was defended by Washingtonians so I can’t say that was surprising. You also headed up the Chesapeake and tried to burn a real city and failed.*
*full disclosure. My grandmother was from New Brunswick and was mixed blood from Loyalist/Mi’kmaq ancestry. The Mi’kmaq, though, back in those days typically allied themselves with Americans against the British.
This is why I moved from Michigan to bike nirvana (Portland) – since we’re only ~150 years old out here in terms of the US, we don’t have to deal with constant references to things from 400 years ago like that pesky British conflict.
Heck, we rarely even hear about the War of Northern Aggression out here. ;-)
Hopefully, there’ll be a rematch Mongo. Every postseason should have a Steeler/Ravens snot knocker to show the rest of the NFL how it’s done. Rex tried to take a facsimile up to New York; but has recently been distracted uploading videos of his wife’s feet (ha!) and whatever immature distraction du jor he’s whipped up for the media. As much as I hate the Steelers, it’s a respectful hate, and I actually really like the ‘Burgh. It’s like a big fancy Harpers Ferry up in them thar hills. It’s the Manhattan of Appalachia. Seriously though, I’ve always had a good time in Pittsburgh.
Man, you people whine a lot. It’s not cold or snowy at all here in Toronto. And the roads have been nicely clear for pretty much the entire winter thus far. Poor form to crow loudly about biking all winter and then bitch every day about it being mildly cold.
A missing C wouldn’t be worthy of a sentence; but a contrived southern Canadian omission of a C while chatting with Americans is worthy of a dissertation.
No imaginary slight is too small to write somthing long and rambling i guess…
…like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on ‘em. “Give me five bees for a quarter,” you’d say. Now where were we? Oh yeah: the important thing was I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn’t have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones…
There really is no temperature where it is too cold to ride, just temperatures where the rider is not sufficiently prepared. I’ve ridden when the temperature was well below freezing, I don’t do it often though, because the problem isn’t even the bike, I can put snow tires on it. The problem is some yahoo that thinks just because his SUV has 4 wheel drive, that he can drive like it’s the middle of summer on 3 season tires and stop on a dime, even when the road is wet ice.
Ya know SDMSS, “America” is the geographic designation of two separate continents, North America and South America. References to the United States should be definitive and not subject to interpretation. For the larger part of the world that doesn’t live in the continental United States please indicate whether you are referring to either the Americas or the United States.
Oh and if the United States hadn’t reneged on their agreement to move to the metric system in the 1960s, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. But that’s a different story.
Just to clarify, though, United States isn’t clear either…even among North American countries. One could easily rebut, “Are you talking United States of America or United States of Mexico?”
I am a teacher, I so wish the USA had converted to metric in the 1960. I remember in grade school when they were preparing for the conversion. I remember gas stations where gas was sold in liters.
Over 30 years later, at a family reunion, I found out why we did not convert. I overheard older male relatives talking, they had voted down every attempt to get foreign languages and the metric system taught in schools. Their odd reasoning for this was along the lines: We fought a war to keep America American we are not going to pay taxes to have them teach that foreign stuff to our kids.
I also found that their parents, as children, were punished for speaking their native language because their parents (my great-great grandparents) had fought so hard to come to America they wanted to sound American.
That insistence of parents on forcing kids to abandon their native languages in favor of English (or whatever is seen to be the “language of success” in their part of the world) continues today, and is one of the reasons so many languages are disappearing. Field linguists try to keep up with at least getting them recorded, but many have been lost forever, and many more are spoken only by the oldest members of small populations and probably will be lost soon.
I, too, remember the emphasis on the metric system when I was in grade school in the ’60s. At the time I welcomed it, but I see now that it was never taught properly, at least not in the schools I attended. The focus was always on learning the conversion factors, not on learning to think in metric units. If someone tells me something is about 4 kilometers away, I have no idea how far that is until I remember (or look up) the conversion factor and do the math. However, if someone says “about two and a half miles” I have an instant mental grasp of the distance involved. For the metric system to really take off in the US, children need to be taught to stop doing conversions and start making estimates in metric units.
A friend in high school had what I’ve always thought was the right answer. He said everything, from road signs to product labels, should have measurements in both Imperial uints (in large print) and metric units (in small print underneath). After a few years, make the Imperial and metric measurements the same size. A few laters later, put the metric measurements on top in large print and the Imperial units underneath in small print. Finally, after a few more years, stop printing the Imperial measurements at all and most people probably wouldn’t even notice. It’s the old story about “boil a frog slowly enough and he won’t hop out of the pot” but I think it could work. For awhile it looked like maybe it was going to be done that way, but we seem to have gotten stuck at the first or second stage years ago (and only on certain things), and have never gone any farther than that.
I think the U.S. would have completed the transition had computers not become so commonplace and willing to do all the heavy lifting of working out the more complicated math necessary when dealing with Imperial Units and English Measurements for us. After that it all became an expensive “why bother?” I’m fine with both systems, prefer metric, but always contextualize when speaking to mixed company out of courteousness. But you know those Ugly Canadians and their culturally imperialist ways, stomping around Europe like 3 legged cows with their little maple leaf flags sewed on their backpacks and insisting over and over again “I’m Canadian” like anybody cares. I guess they don’t want anyone to mistake them for their more polite American neighbors that seem just like them.
If “America” were not common usage for the United States in the English speaking world, including Canada, I wouldn’t be using it. But are we to pretend that common usage isn’t common usage like a Canadian pretending that specifying Celsius or Fahrenheit isn’t necessary when speaking with Americans? If I did that I’d just be just like a Canadian, which is just a pretentious American with a royal family.
Ya know SDMSS – if that really is your name – it’s considered standard practice on the Internet to get one’s panties in the tightest of bunches over the most trivial of stuff, but you seem to have taken that on as a competetive sport. Bravo! I thought maybe you and I had a serious difference of opinion here, but now I see that it’s just your way of communicating your love to everyone. How do you do it? I’m not capable of finding little things like a missing F/C problematic in perfectly obvious contexts, and I don’t think far enough outside the norms to reach for “condescending” or to believe anyone out there writes public comments exclusively for my benefit – yet that seems natural and easy for you.’
-3 K is impossible, as Kelvin and Rankine are absolute temperature scales that have their zero at Absolute Zero where all atomic motion due to heat ceases. You can’t get coldwer than Absolute Zero.
Strange, I had to look-up ‘supraconducting’ and found a lot of links to SUPERCONDUCTING instead!
SUPRAconducting would mean the current ‘transcends’ the conductor – avoids it?
SUPERconducting means ‘a very good conductor’- as if it had NO resistance to current flow.
I suppose both do the job, but I would worry about what the current was up when it was not flowing along the conductor, but transcending it!
Kevin isn’t Canadian. Real Canucks don’t whine about the cold. Recall that Kevin loves to quote prices in terms of £ Sterling not Dollars. I’m quite sure that Kevin doesn’t have a Loony or a Toony in his pocket.
I really like Kevin and what he brings to the threads; but his contrived refusal to contextualize his daily temperature references drives me bonkers. For someone who insists on typing out “Imperial Units” instead of just saying friggen pounds to an obvious weight reference I think the condescending intent could not be more blatant.
OK Kevin, it’s time for you to seriously reconsider where you live and how you travel.
If you can’t stand the mild winters of southern Ontario then you might have to either move back to balmy ‘ol England or relocate to another English colony. Bermuda seems the logical choice since India is no longer a property of the Queen. At the current rate of Global Warming it will be a few years before snow reaches the island.
If you decide to stay in Canada then you should consider a nice set of Nordic skis like most other serious cyclists switch to in the winter. You could use the cross training and you’ll stay much warmer too! Of course the lack of a motor will most likely turn you away from this choice. There is of course the other option that 99% of Canadians use – a snowmobile.
Re:”balmy old England” – currently at -5c and falling. We have had enough snow to leave a thin sheet everywhere, around 1/2″ or so. The ice is getting harder and any thaw is freezing hard now. I salted the drive and the runoff has frozen solid it is so cold!
Maybe I could go to Kevin’s place for a summer break?
Re: ‘opportunity to ride in snow’ in Australia – Apparently ‘Global Warming’ will grant such a wish according to the weather prophets! When I was at school in the 1960s, I noticed a correlation between the periods when we had snow and the Sunspot cycle. Both seemed to happen at 11-year intervals and a quick Google last night confirmed my suspicians. During the spot max, the sun’s light-radiation is a tiny bit lower, but more significantly, other radiation is much lower affecting the atmosphere, so we get reduced heating of the polar caps etc. It was fun to see a lifelong theory upheld by science!
Yeah, but with a sample size of one, it’s a little to hard to figure out when the next one will be . It’s handy to think that we’re practicing our carbon burning to get ready for the next one, but at the rate we’re going, we’ll have used it all up before then.
Me, I am just grateful that hemispherical darkening is past. Seems to happen every year, WTF is up with that?
Yes, and it is the logical time to begin the year, much more sensible than celibrating on a day that was once supposed to coincide with the solstice. Happy New Year all!
A winter cold I can’t seem to shake didn’t stop me from beating 2 electric bikes up the hill on this morning’s commute.
I don’t usually race but that was fun
It’s been around 0 here for a couple of days now. But just before that we had a (sudden!) massive drop to 15 or even 20 in some places. It wasn’t so bad at all. Just don’t forget woolen socks and good gloves, and I’m fine. It’s just the bike facilities in Kraków and nervous drivers that may be causing trouble, especially in winter.
Considering the source, I just assumed it was short for pompous. Kev is apparently at 30% pompousness at the moment. That’s really, really low for him.
I would do more winter riding if there were a warm and inviting coffee, breakfast, lunch, free wifi, brunch, hot choclate place at least every mile. And no cars.
i’ve long preferred to think of the winter solstice as the first day of summer since the days are now getting longer. it’s such a dark, dreary, cold time of year i need that psychological boost. here’s to summer!
Come one light! Funny thing is tho, I’m trying to work on a degree, that if I succeed, I’ll have roughly 12 hours of light year round. I’ll still need the lights for the bike, perhaps even more so than here.
The realization that the days are lengthening is what keeps me from going stark barking mad this time of year. I used to think it was the Christmas holiday, but now I know it’s the short days that drove me to depression.
I wonder how many seconds longer it is here south of Chi-town….
He ought to buy a hot chocolate or something, then he’d be a paying customer, not just “hanging out”. Hopefully he at least has a little bit of cash on him.
It’s been many years since I last worked in a convenience store, but in the two stores where I worked we didn’t mind people just “hanging out” if they weren’t obvious nuisances or shoplifters. We even gave free coffee to police officers to encourage them to hang around at night, but other people were welcome too as long as they didn’t make trouble.
We did a mountain ride (on snowy roads) once, a lot of freezing rain, a friend of mine got so cold, we took him to a convenience store/laundromat, borrowed a blanket from a customer and put his wet clothes in a dryer. Other customers brought coffee and even helped moved a bench closer to the dryer vent for warmth. After an hour or so, he was recovered, the rain stopped and we were on our way again. Being a cyclist puts you in contact with some of the best, and the worst, people in the world, don’t think it matters where you are riding. I have asked convenience store people if I could bring my bike inside for a few minutes when I forgot my lock, and about 75 percent of the time, it’s not a problem. The other 25 percent — “You can’t bring that thing in here” — just make you smile. (BTW my bike is a lot cleaner than the hot dog rollers in there).
Wow, we will fight about anything. I love that. lol But, yea I was figuring the temps were in F not C. It was 30 degress F here in Columbus, OH and I was sooo uncomfortable warm on the ride home! Seriously. 2-3 weeks ago it was 5 degrees with wind chill in the 20′s. That was bloody painful.
But, I am thankful for the many stores and gas stations that allow me to “just stand here for a few minutes.” The folks at subway are GREAT. And the girls are cute! Food, they sell food there, huh? who knew?!?
for me its below -5C where it starts to be annoying. i’m not freezing (except for my toes) but my will to put some power on the pedal goes down a lot and so goes the fun. plus i hav to add an hour to my daily ride which i dont recognise during the ride but it sums up till the end of the week.
bought a track bike last summer .. hoped to get on track this winter, but i’m exhausted and not motivated.
Temperature is all in your head. If you think it is too cold, then it is. If you think it is too warm, then it is. You can ride in any temperature if you have the right equipment and you dress appropriately. Now get out and ride
I’ve never found a clothing combination that works well for both the beginiing and end of a ride on a cold day. If I’m comfortably warm at the beginning, I’ll be sweating after the first couple of miles. With much trial and error I’ve finally come up with an acceptable compromise for the mid20s to upper30s °F (with wind chill in the teens or below, but still above 0 °F) in which I’ve been riding lately. In addition to the long pants and short-sleeved shirt or t-shirt (over a sleeveless undershirt) that I wear year-round, I add a long-sleeved shirt and a light windbreaker. When it’s below 32 °F I add a balaclava. That has me feeling frozen for a mile or two, but soon I warm up and can ride for an hour or two while feeling toasty-warm with minimal sweating. (I still carry an extra shirt and undershirt in case it gets colder, or if I arrive sweaty at my destination and need to change.) My hands stay cold longer, even with gloves, until my core temperature rises enough for my body to restore proper circulation to my extremities. The only real problem is all that cold air I breathe, since I always breathe deeply through my mouth while riding. My tongue, throat and lungs get dry and sore after awhile.
I have little problem with temperature down to 20 or so wearing winter cycling boots, two layers of socks (silk & merino), warm tights, silk long-sleeve undershirt, Merino wool base layer, windbreaker, lobsterclaw gloves, and a balaclava. Opening the zipper on my windbreaker manages sweat pretty well, in my experience. Above 30 (which these days feels balmy) I would wear quite a bit less, substituting normal insulated cycling gloves for the lobsterclaws, headband in place of the balaclava, maybe lighter tights. It’s better to be a little bit cold at the beginning, because it’s pretty easy to make yourself warmer (just push), but you don’t want to strip in the cold, and sweat just feels yucky.
Yehuda just doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who would hang out in a convenience store to warm up. I think he would be more likely to put on an extra layer and keep going. He’s not going to get very far on his tour if he keeps this up.
Anyone who bikes in the winter knows that coffee shops are the equivelant to gas stations for cars without the smelly gas. There is nothing, nothing, like riding over a few inches of snow in cold weather at 5 AM on your way to work through a big and dark woods. You feel so warm and cozy. You can tell when it is warm outside when you hear birds singing. When it is too cold for the birds to sing it is time to put on another layer and be greatful you don’t have feathers.
Solstice is over. Almost there: longer days, sunshine, blue skies and bikes. Early morning rides watching the dawn over the mountains. Lawnmowers, flowers, and gardens. Cooking outside, lawn chairs in the grass. Barefoot kids running through lawn sprinklers. (Thanks, Leo)
It’s reached a balmy 61 °F here today, and one of my neighbors is out mowing his lawn right now. All the grass in the neighborhood is brown, and I haven’t seen an eighth of an inch of growth in weeks, but he’s mowing anyway. I guess he just enjoys it, since I can see no difference between the already mown part of his lawn and the part he’s still mowing.
Sunshine?????? I am jealous. All winter long I console myself by remembering that it is six months to be enjoyed without mosquitos (or lawnmowers) but the lack of bright sunlight gets tedious.
There used to be a button that turned the comments on and off under the comic, I hacked my cookies so that comments were always on so I haven’t checked to see if the button was still there or not…
Neither do I. All day I’ve been wondering whether “the Grill Roller” is a real place, or something Rick made up, because the name makes no sense to me at all. What IS a grill roller anyway? Those little wheels on the bottom of a barbecue grill?
I didn’t see where Rick mentions “the Grill Roller” until I read the title.
I think it means the rollers in some grills that slowly move the food under the heat source.
Something like they use for cooking Pizzas and some donuts.
U.S. intelligence community responds to massive WikiLeaks document dump with newly formed WikiLeaks Task Force aimed at determining how leaks will affect intelligence operations
Hmm… I’m north of the Mason-Dixon Line, matter of fact I’m just south of the northern most major city in America, and it’s currently 50F and it rarely snows here. But, please don’t pack your panniers and move here, it’s too crowded already.
This evening, as I was coming out of the Capitol Complex at the Washington/Greenbrier gate, I had a green light. When I was about halfway across the street, a truck bearing the logo of a certain well-established local business came flying up Washington and into a left-turn–right into my path. He came THAT close to hitting me.
Scared? You betcha. But even more, I was ANGRY. No, I was FURIOUS. That driver should thank his lucky stars that he was encased in a steel cage and was powered by multiple horsepower, because if I could have gotten my hands on him I wou…ld have pounded the living *#$% out of him!
The business whose truck he was driving is one I ride past most days on the way home. I used my adrenaline to pedal like Lance leading the peloton, and got there before they closed. I went inside and asked to speak to the manager. Although I was still upset, I didn’t rant, I didn’t rave, I didn’t scream, I didn’t swear. I just very calmly and quietly told him what had happened, and where, and when, and asked him to have a word with the driver.
I’m sorry if this means he’ll loose his job just before Christmas, but he should have thought of that before he drove his employer’s truck like a maniac.
Wish I had the opportunity to ride in snow.. too warm here in Northern Australia.
Be careful what you wish for. You might be cursed by having your wish granted.
I wish it was not so #$%@!! cold and annoyingly snowy here in Toronto. Current temperature -8, today’s high -4 POMP 30%. Next week’s forecast features all the daily highs below zero. My wish will be granted… in four months.
Ya know Kevin, it is considered standard practice to attach either a C or an F to a temperature reference on a message board or comment thread with a pan-English audience and/or participation that includes Americans. Of course, you already know that, and I’m sorry for calling out your contrivance, but considering that this is an American site I think your refusal to do so is a little rude and arguably imperialistic. I like you, I enjoy your postings and your quirkiness, but would it kill you to throw us a C?
Who cares, man. Aren’t there only two tempuratures to really care about in relation to cycling: cold enough for snow to stick and then form/ maintain ice on a given route; and NOT that cold. I assume that anyone North of the Mason-Dixon Line is in the former category during this time of year. AND you can infer which one he meant (he’s in Toronto not Igloolik).
I’m not asking for the conversion. Us Americans can do the math ourselves. Seeing how he complains bitterly about temperatures barely below freezing I do need a contextual reference because I have a hard time calibrating how a Canadian can complain so bitterly about 31 F temperatures. Two simple little keystrokes is all it takes to properly contextualize the daily references. Also, the Mason-Dixon line isn’t exactly like that old Bugs Bunny cartoon that actually delineates anything. Snow doesn’t magically turn to rain when an Alberta clipper crosses the line sweeps the east coast. D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York all have virtually identical climates.
It snows quite often south of the Mason-Dixon. Even in Al Gore’s home state!
I live mere yards south of the line. I can vouch through bitter experience that crao weather does not respect imaginary lines on a map.
Kevin: “Current temperature -8“
SDMSS: “… can complain so bitterly about 31 F temperatures.”
SDMSS: “Us Americans can do the math ourselves.”
Apparently there’s one who can’t!
I think you should really be telling us the temperature in Kelvin. If it is good enough for science, it should be good enough for you!
Ha, calling metric Imperialist is pretty funny. Americans are among the last users of the Imperial measuring system (less of a system than a social history of how to avoid comprehensive units). If you know someone’s posting from Toronto, I’m sure you’ll work it out. Most of my Stateside friends get scared of anything below 47o, let alone 32o (yeah, some of us know Fahrenheit, we just think it’s funny).
Don’t forget the effect of wind chill on a cyclist – Let’s be careful out there, people!
See, that’s just the point. Not one person from southern Canada has honestly forgotten to consider American perceptions since we kicked your ancestors out of America for being loyalists. It’s all you think about.
That’s true, us Loyalists did leave the Excited States. After we burned the capital in 1812
. Although to be truthful, at that time it was pretty much all Britan and / or France coming down from the North albeit with some Natives.
Yeah, you Canadians may have come down and burned the capital, but it was defended by Washingtonians so I can’t say that was surprising. You also headed up the Chesapeake and tried to burn a real city and failed.*
*full disclosure. My grandmother was from New Brunswick and was mixed blood from Loyalist/Mi’kmaq ancestry. The Mi’kmaq, though, back in those days typically allied themselves with Americans against the British.
This is why I moved from Michigan to bike nirvana (Portland) – since we’re only ~150 years old out here in terms of the US, we don’t have to deal with constant references to things from 400 years ago like that pesky British conflict.
Heck, we rarely even hear about the War of Northern Aggression out here. ;-)
Ah, yes, Portland, where everybody looks the same, thinks the same. I don’t think I could handle it.
What’s this “real city” shit? Thought you lived in Ravens country.
Hopefully, there’ll be a rematch Mongo. Every postseason should have a Steeler/Ravens snot knocker to show the rest of the NFL how it’s done. Rex tried to take a facsimile up to New York; but has recently been distracted uploading videos of his wife’s feet (ha!) and whatever immature distraction du jor he’s whipped up for the media. As much as I hate the Steelers, it’s a respectful hate, and I actually really like the ‘Burgh. It’s like a big fancy Harpers Ferry up in them thar hills.
It’s the Manhattan of Appalachia. Seriously though, I’ve always had a good time in Pittsburgh.
Man, you people whine a lot. It’s not cold or snowy at all here in Toronto. And the roads have been nicely clear for pretty much the entire winter thus far. Poor form to crow loudly about biking all winter and then bitch every day about it being mildly cold.
And a whole paragraph about a missing C. Really?
Excellent points, thank you for a tiny ray of LOGIC.
A missing C wouldn’t be worthy of a sentence; but a contrived southern Canadian omission of a C while chatting with Americans is worthy of a dissertation.
No imaginary slight is too small to write somthing long and rambling i guess…
…like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on ‘em. “Give me five bees for a quarter,” you’d say. Now where were we? Oh yeah: the important thing was I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn’t have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones…
There really is no temperature where it is too cold to ride, just temperatures where the rider is not sufficiently prepared. I’ve ridden when the temperature was well below freezing, I don’t do it often though, because the problem isn’t even the bike, I can put snow tires on it. The problem is some yahoo that thinks just because his SUV has 4 wheel drive, that he can drive like it’s the middle of summer on 3 season tires and stop on a dime, even when the road is wet ice.
Ya know SDMSS, “America” is the geographic designation of two separate continents, North America and South America. References to the United States should be definitive and not subject to interpretation. For the larger part of the world that doesn’t live in the continental United States please indicate whether you are referring to either the Americas or the United States.
Oh and if the United States hadn’t reneged on their agreement to move to the metric system in the 1960s, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. But that’s a different story.
Just to clarify, though, United States isn’t clear either…even among North American countries. One could easily rebut, “Are you talking United States of America or United States of Mexico?”
I am a teacher, I so wish the USA had converted to metric in the 1960. I remember in grade school when they were preparing for the conversion. I remember gas stations where gas was sold in liters.
Over 30 years later, at a family reunion, I found out why we did not convert. I overheard older male relatives talking, they had voted down every attempt to get foreign languages and the metric system taught in schools. Their odd reasoning for this was along the lines: We fought a war to keep America American we are not going to pay taxes to have them teach that foreign stuff to our kids.
I also found that their parents, as children, were punished for speaking their native language because their parents (my great-great grandparents) had fought so hard to come to America they wanted to sound American.
And today’s kids are puinished if they refuse to learn the language of illegal aliens. How far we’ve come.
That insistence of parents on forcing kids to abandon their native languages in favor of English (or whatever is seen to be the “language of success” in their part of the world) continues today, and is one of the reasons so many languages are disappearing. Field linguists try to keep up with at least getting them recorded, but many have been lost forever, and many more are spoken only by the oldest members of small populations and probably will be lost soon.
I, too, remember the emphasis on the metric system when I was in grade school in the ’60s. At the time I welcomed it, but I see now that it was never taught properly, at least not in the schools I attended. The focus was always on learning the conversion factors, not on learning to think in metric units. If someone tells me something is about 4 kilometers away, I have no idea how far that is until I remember (or look up) the conversion factor and do the math. However, if someone says “about two and a half miles” I have an instant mental grasp of the distance involved. For the metric system to really take off in the US, children need to be taught to stop doing conversions and start making estimates in metric units.
A friend in high school had what I’ve always thought was the right answer. He said everything, from road signs to product labels, should have measurements in both Imperial uints (in large print) and metric units (in small print underneath). After a few years, make the Imperial and metric measurements the same size. A few laters later, put the metric measurements on top in large print and the Imperial units underneath in small print. Finally, after a few more years, stop printing the Imperial measurements at all and most people probably wouldn’t even notice. It’s the old story about “boil a frog slowly enough and he won’t hop out of the pot” but I think it could work. For awhile it looked like maybe it was going to be done that way, but we seem to have gotten stuck at the first or second stage years ago (and only on certain things), and have never gone any farther than that.
I think the U.S. would have completed the transition had computers not become so commonplace and willing to do all the heavy lifting of working out the more complicated math necessary when dealing with Imperial Units and English Measurements for us. After that it all became an expensive “why bother?” I’m fine with both systems, prefer metric, but always contextualize when speaking to mixed company out of courteousness. But you know those Ugly Canadians and their culturally imperialist ways, stomping around Europe like 3 legged cows with their little maple leaf flags sewed on their backpacks and insisting over and over again “I’m Canadian” like anybody cares. I guess they don’t want anyone to mistake them for their more polite American neighbors that seem just like them.
If “America” were not common usage for the United States in the English speaking world, including Canada, I wouldn’t be using it. But are we to pretend that common usage isn’t common usage like a Canadian pretending that specifying Celsius or Fahrenheit isn’t necessary when speaking with Americans? If I did that I’d just be just like a Canadian, which is just a pretentious American with a royal family.
Only a complete moron would see imperialism in an irrelevant temperature reference in a cartoon. Get a life, man!
No, only a complete moron would fail to recognize goodnatured needling when they see it.
Ya know SDMSS – if that really is your name – it’s considered standard practice on the Internet to get one’s panties in the tightest of bunches over the most trivial of stuff, but you seem to have taken that on as a competetive sport. Bravo! I thought maybe you and I had a serious difference of opinion here, but now I see that it’s just your way of communicating your love to everyone. How do you do it? I’m not capable of finding little things like a missing F/C problematic in perfectly obvious contexts, and I don’t think far enough outside the norms to reach for “condescending” or to believe anyone out there writes public comments exclusively for my benefit – yet that seems natural and easy for you.’
I’m in earnest awe.
I’m just funning. With that said, there is nothing obvious about a context when a context is intentionally omitted.
It could be Kelvin as well… Now -3 K is REALLY cold but it must be great for riding an electric bicycle if normal wires get supraconducting.
-3 K is impossible, as Kelvin and Rankine are absolute temperature scales that have their zero at Absolute Zero where all atomic motion due to heat ceases. You can’t get coldwer than Absolute Zero.
Strange, I had to look-up ‘supraconducting’ and found a lot of links to SUPERCONDUCTING instead!
SUPRAconducting would mean the current ‘transcends’ the conductor – avoids it?
SUPERconducting means ‘a very good conductor’- as if it had NO resistance to current flow.
I suppose both do the job, but I would worry about what the current was up when it was not flowing along the conductor, but transcending it!
Kevin isn’t Canadian. Real Canucks don’t whine about the cold. Recall that Kevin loves to quote prices in terms of £ Sterling not Dollars. I’m quite sure that Kevin doesn’t have a Loony or a Toony in his pocket.
I really like Kevin and what he brings to the threads; but his contrived refusal to contextualize his daily temperature references drives me bonkers. For someone who insists on typing out “Imperial Units” instead of just saying friggen pounds to an obvious weight reference I think the condescending intent could not be more blatant.
Kevvie just wants everyone to think Kevvie’s smarter than he really is. That’s my theory, anyways.
I feel your pain. The ride to work yesterday was a brutal 49F and it only warmed up 31F more for the ride home.
are you also in tucson?
OK Kevin, it’s time for you to seriously reconsider where you live and how you travel.
If you can’t stand the mild winters of southern Ontario then you might have to either move back to balmy ‘ol England or relocate to another English colony. Bermuda seems the logical choice since India is no longer a property of the Queen. At the current rate of Global Warming it will be a few years before snow reaches the island.
If you decide to stay in Canada then you should consider a nice set of Nordic skis like most other serious cyclists switch to in the winter. You could use the cross training and you’ll stay much warmer too! Of course the lack of a motor will most likely turn you away from this choice. There is of course the other option that 99% of Canadians use – a snowmobile.
Re:”balmy old England” – currently at -5c and falling. We have had enough snow to leave a thin sheet everywhere, around 1/2″ or so. The ice is getting harder and any thaw is freezing hard now. I salted the drive and the runoff has frozen solid it is so cold!
Maybe I could go to Kevin’s place for a summer break?
-8C? that is a balmy 18F, That is still riding weather when dressed properly. And I am not exactly young at 56 years.
Come down to Southern Australia some time, I had some great rides from sea level to the snow line last winter/autumn.
It snowed in Perisher and Charlotte’s Pass on Tuesday.
Meh. I have biked at 31 degrees (at that point, it doesn’t matter if it is a C or F) in Chicago.
Agreed, Isaac C, at that point it doesn’t matter if C or F. FWIW, the exact point of intersection is -40.
Re: ‘opportunity to ride in snow’ in Australia – Apparently ‘Global Warming’ will grant such a wish according to the weather prophets! When I was at school in the 1960s, I noticed a correlation between the periods when we had snow and the Sunspot cycle. Both seemed to happen at 11-year intervals and a quick Google last night confirmed my suspicians. During the spot max, the sun’s light-radiation is a tiny bit lower, but more significantly, other radiation is much lower affecting the atmosphere, so we get reduced heating of the polar caps etc. It was fun to see a lifelong theory upheld by science!
Look up “Maunder Minimum”. And stock up on woolies.
Yeah, but with a sample size of one, it’s a little to hard to figure out when the next one will be
. It’s handy to think that we’re practicing our carbon burning to get ready for the next one, but at the rate we’re going, we’ll have used it all up before then.
Me, I am just grateful that hemispherical darkening is past. Seems to happen every year, WTF is up with that?
Yes, and it is the logical time to begin the year, much more sensible than celibrating on a day that was once supposed to coincide with the solstice. Happy New Year all!
Okay, I might have got the max/min correlations reversed but the idea still holds?
…most of you need to ride more and complain less…
Escape from the city?
I thought he meant he had gained enough momentum to overcome the resistance of the snow through which he’s riding.
A winter cold I can’t seem to shake didn’t stop me from beating 2 electric bikes up the hill on this morning’s commute.
I don’t usually race but that was fun
Yes, John Henry.
Cat 6
There are hill is Tel Aviv??
But the electric bikes were being pedalled as the acid in their batteries had iced-up?
Ken you can have some of ours if you like ;o) Mind you it was milder at least this morning, only -3C
It’s been around 0 here for a couple of days now. But just before that we had a (sudden!) massive drop to 15 or even 20 in some places. It wasn’t so bad at all. Just don’t forget woolen socks and good gloves, and I’m fine. It’s just the bike facilities in Kraków and nervous drivers that may be causing trouble, especially in winter.
O.K. I give up. What’s POMP stand for ?
Possibility of Measurable Precipitation
All I could find was a mention on a Kentucky weather site!
Maybe http://www.pompandclout.com/ ?
Also – Pomp and Ceremony etc…
Considering the source, I just assumed it was short for pompous. Kev is apparently at 30% pompousness at the moment. That’s really, really low for him.
I would do more winter riding if there were a warm and inviting coffee, breakfast, lunch, free wifi, brunch, hot choclate place at least every mile. And no cars.
Oh, but sometimes cars are fun. Rush hour + snow = parking lots. Stopped care are pretty safe.
s/care/cars/, sigh
Winter is over. Here in Chicago the length of today is six seconds LONGER than yesterday. It’s like the start of spring.
i’ve long preferred to think of the winter solstice as the first day of summer since the days are now getting longer. it’s such a dark, dreary, cold time of year i need that psychological boost. here’s to summer!
Come one light! Funny thing is tho, I’m trying to work on a degree, that if I succeed, I’ll have roughly 12 hours of light year round. I’ll still need the lights for the bike, perhaps even more so than here.
The realization that the days are lengthening is what keeps me from going stark barking mad this time of year. I used to think it was the Christmas holiday, but now I know it’s the short days that drove me to depression.
I wonder how many seconds longer it is here south of Chi-town….
so why isnt he allowed to hang out and warm up ?
He ought to buy a hot chocolate or something, then he’d be a paying customer, not just “hanging out”. Hopefully he at least has a little bit of cash on him.
one needs to be paying customer to be allowed to warm up ? :-O
most people wouldnt throw out a man for a reason like that ..
It’s been many years since I last worked in a convenience store, but in the two stores where I worked we didn’t mind people just “hanging out” if they weren’t obvious nuisances or shoplifters. We even gave free coffee to police officers to encourage them to hang around at night, but other people were welcome too as long as they didn’t make trouble.
We did a mountain ride (on snowy roads) once, a lot of freezing rain, a friend of mine got so cold, we took him to a convenience store/laundromat, borrowed a blanket from a customer and put his wet clothes in a dryer. Other customers brought coffee and even helped moved a bench closer to the dryer vent for warmth. After an hour or so, he was recovered, the rain stopped and we were on our way again. Being a cyclist puts you in contact with some of the best, and the worst, people in the world, don’t think it matters where you are riding. I have asked convenience store people if I could bring my bike inside for a few minutes when I forgot my lock, and about 75 percent of the time, it’s not a problem. The other 25 percent — “You can’t bring that thing in here” — just make you smile. (BTW my bike is a lot cleaner than the hot dog rollers in there).
Wow, we will fight about anything. I love that. lol But, yea I was figuring the temps were in F not C. It was 30 degress F here in Columbus, OH and I was sooo uncomfortable warm on the ride home! Seriously. 2-3 weeks ago it was 5 degrees with wind chill in the 20′s. That was bloody painful.
But, I am thankful for the many stores and gas stations that allow me to “just stand here for a few minutes.” The folks at subway are GREAT. And the girls are cute! Food, they sell food there, huh? who knew?!?
Poor Yehuda.
for me its below -5C where it starts to be annoying. i’m not freezing (except for my toes) but my will to put some power on the pedal goes down a lot and so goes the fun. plus i hav to add an hour to my daily ride which i dont recognise during the ride but it sums up till the end of the week.
bought a track bike last summer .. hoped to get on track this winter, but i’m exhausted and not motivated.
If Yehuda was in San Francisco he would have the right to “hang out”, after all I’m sure they think he’s homeless
Yehuda’s gotta put on a better front of looking like he’s gonna buy something.
Temperature is all in your head. If you think it is too cold, then it is. If you think it is too warm, then it is. You can ride in any temperature if you have the right equipment and you dress appropriately. Now get out and ride
I’ve never found a clothing combination that works well for both the beginiing and end of a ride on a cold day. If I’m comfortably warm at the beginning, I’ll be sweating after the first couple of miles. With much trial and error I’ve finally come up with an acceptable compromise for the mid20s to upper30s °F (with wind chill in the teens or below, but still above 0 °F) in which I’ve been riding lately. In addition to the long pants and short-sleeved shirt or t-shirt (over a sleeveless undershirt) that I wear year-round, I add a long-sleeved shirt and a light windbreaker. When it’s below 32 °F I add a balaclava. That has me feeling frozen for a mile or two, but soon I warm up and can ride for an hour or two while feeling toasty-warm with minimal sweating. (I still carry an extra shirt and undershirt in case it gets colder, or if I arrive sweaty at my destination and need to change.) My hands stay cold longer, even with gloves, until my core temperature rises enough for my body to restore proper circulation to my extremities. The only real problem is all that cold air I breathe, since I always breathe deeply through my mouth while riding. My tongue, throat and lungs get dry and sore after awhile.
I have little problem with temperature down to 20 or so wearing winter cycling boots, two layers of socks (silk & merino), warm tights, silk long-sleeve undershirt, Merino wool base layer, windbreaker, lobsterclaw gloves, and a balaclava. Opening the zipper on my windbreaker manages sweat pretty well, in my experience. Above 30 (which these days feels balmy) I would wear quite a bit less, substituting normal insulated cycling gloves for the lobsterclaws, headband in place of the balaclava, maybe lighter tights. It’s better to be a little bit cold at the beginning, because it’s pretty easy to make yourself warmer (just push), but you don’t want to strip in the cold, and sweat just feels yucky.
Yehuda just doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who would hang out in a convenience store to warm up. I think he would be more likely to put on an extra layer and keep going. He’s not going to get very far on his tour if he keeps this up.
Hmm, all that frost looks suspiciously like a higher air-moisture content…I wonder if he is going costal.
It’s 2.7 Kelvin in NYC right now. Not bad but could be a little warmer.
2.7 K is -454.81° F or 270.45° C. Seems a bit nippy, even for New York.
Yeah, I made up the number to see if anyone is paying attention. 0K is absolute zero when everything stops
Anyone who bikes in the winter knows that coffee shops are the equivelant to gas stations for cars without the smelly gas. There is nothing, nothing, like riding over a few inches of snow in cold weather at 5 AM on your way to work through a big and dark woods. You feel so warm and cozy. You can tell when it is warm outside when you hear birds singing. When it is too cold for the birds to sing it is time to put on another layer and be greatful you don’t have feathers.
Except coffee shop coffee is about 10 times more offensively expensive than gas/petrol and not 1/10th as necessary.
Perhaps you have been drinking the wrong coffee SDMSS!
maybe it was one of ‘our’ coffeeshops … the one where coffee isn’t on the menu, but things like space cake is.
Heading out for my over priced (not really) coffee in an hour. I haved to put on 10 cotton layers first .
Have a great holiday all.
Solstice is over. Almost there: longer days, sunshine, blue skies and bikes. Early morning rides watching the dawn over the mountains. Lawnmowers, flowers, and gardens. Cooking outside, lawn chairs in the grass. Barefoot kids running through lawn sprinklers. (Thanks, Leo)
“…barefoot girls dancin’ in the moonlight…”
John Fogarty, “Green River”
Sounds good except for the damn lawnmowers.
It’s reached a balmy 61 °F here today, and one of my neighbors is out mowing his lawn right now. All the grass in the neighborhood is brown, and I haven’t seen an eighth of an inch of growth in weeks, but he’s mowing anyway. I guess he just enjoys it, since I can see no difference between the already mown part of his lawn and the part he’s still mowing.
brrrr, I feel for you Yehuda, it’s cold out! We’re enjoying highs of 14 and lows of 20 *Celsius of course
Rode my moutain bike yesterday here in Arizona. Sunny, 65 degrees! Never have to shovel snow again or commute in it. WOOT!
Sunshine?????? I am jealous. All winter long I console myself by remembering that it is six months to be enjoyed without mosquitos (or lawnmowers) but the lack of bright sunlight gets tedious.
yah know. We could really use a version of this website without the endless drivel. How about it Rick Smith, kill the chat room.
I come here for the chat as much as the comic. If you don’t like it, read the comic and leave. It’s a no-brainer.
But there is such a version. It’s called RSS. I’d explain to you how to subscribe, but you don’t like comments, so….
Good sarcasm!! Bravo – well done.
There used to be a button that turned the comments on and off under the comic, I hacked my cookies so that comments were always on so I haven’t checked to see if the button was still there or not…
I wonder Yehuda’s tire selection for the snow.
I was about to write “tourer tyre” but I like my wife’s comment best -’It’s a cartoon, he doesn’t need to make a selection!’
Spokeless!
But I don’t SEE a grill roller.
Neither do I. All day I’ve been wondering whether “the Grill Roller” is a real place, or something Rick made up, because the name makes no sense to me at all. What IS a grill roller anyway? Those little wheels on the bottom of a barbecue grill?
I didn’t see where Rick mentions “the Grill Roller” until I read the title.
I think it means the rollers in some grills that slowly move the food under the heat source.
Something like they use for cooking Pizzas and some donuts.
Just found http://www.enjays.co.uk/search/rollergrill-luxury-electric-griddle/0/?gclid=CKL885CKgaYCFQJO4Qodvz-sow
Look Out, WikiLeaks:
CIA Sending in WTF
U.S. intelligence community responds to massive WikiLeaks document dump with newly formed WikiLeaks Task Force aimed at determining how leaks will affect intelligence operations
Hmm… I’m north of the Mason-Dixon Line, matter of fact I’m just south of the northern most major city in America, and it’s currently 50F and it rarely snows here. But, please don’t pack your panniers and move here, it’s too crowded already.
This evening, as I was coming out of the Capitol Complex at the Washington/Greenbrier gate, I had a green light. When I was about halfway across the street, a truck bearing the logo of a certain well-established local business came flying up Washington and into a left-turn–right into my path. He came THAT close to hitting me.
Scared? You betcha. But even more, I was ANGRY. No, I was FURIOUS. That driver should thank his lucky stars that he was encased in a steel cage and was powered by multiple horsepower, because if I could have gotten my hands on him I wou…ld have pounded the living *#$% out of him!
The business whose truck he was driving is one I ride past most days on the way home. I used my adrenaline to pedal like Lance leading the peloton, and got there before they closed. I went inside and asked to speak to the manager. Although I was still upset, I didn’t rant, I didn’t rave, I didn’t scream, I didn’t swear. I just very calmly and quietly told him what had happened, and where, and when, and asked him to have a word with the driver.
I’m sorry if this means he’ll loose his job just before Christmas, but he should have thought of that before he drove his employer’s truck like a maniac.
Appropriate for the season.
“… and Yehuda brought forth Fenders the cat and laid him in his bar bag, for there was no room in the Roller Grill.” Yehuda 2:7