Cold Weather Riding

I rode my bike to work today. I was hot the whole way in, I had to open the vents in my helmet to try to cool off a little.

The Rohloff hub says the oil freezes below -15C. A few weeks back I put some synthetic oil into the hub as well as the stuff that's in there now. You're not supposed to put in non-prescribed oil as there's some nylon parts that can apparently degrade, but motorcycle oil doesn't have addatives quite the same as car oil, since the clutch plate uses the engine oil too, so it can't have as many magic ingredients. Or so I hope anyway.

Having said that, my fork was frozen stiff. And I couldn't shift anyway since the grease in the fully lined Rohloff shifter cables was frozen solid. And the oil in the hub must have been pretty viscous as I felt like I had a lot of rolling resistance.

It's pretty amazing what 4-5 layers of synthetic windproof fabrics can achieve. I also can't say enough good things about the Lake MXZ302 winter cycling boots I got this year. With two pairs of good socks, I bet I could do 90 minutes in this temperature before my feet got cold, maybe 2 hours if I could avoid sweating. I looked at a lot of winter riding shoes before getting these. The other winter shoe brands mean "winter riding shoes, like if you live in San Diego or Phoenix". And everyone knows that isn't really winter.