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| Dear Rodzilla (members of team Sons of Perdition, their wives, friends and pretty much anybody who has tried to ride a bike for two days in a row since Spring allegedly sprung), Mother Nature hates you. Deal with it! Please accept our sincerest apologies for the suffering of people affected by Mother Nature's wrath. We at Backcountry.com send our deepest condolences, we extend our sincerest apologies to those who lacked the foresight to dress appropriately for the weather at hand. Remember we offer many products which can make your outdoor experiences more tolerable in these heady days of global warming and the attendant meteorological anomalies. If you are freezing your butt off on your morning rides, visit one of our many websites: Chainlove.com, Realcyclist.com, Bonktown.com Departmentofgoods.com etc, buy yourself some gear and stop complaining, otherwise suffer in silence (and keep your e-complaints off our customer service websites, our people have more important things to do than listen to you whine). Sincerely, Jill Layfield CEO Backcountry.com | |
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Thanks Jill, but no apology necessary. Yes it's been crappy weather, yes I have to cover every inch of flesh before I get on my bike, yes I know the approximate of time I can ride before fingers that are cold and numb become fingers that are frostbit and necrotic (for me at temperatures below 35f it's roughly an hour and ten minutes in case you were wondering). And yes, all of those things are expected if you're insisting on riding your bike in January, but it's almost May, this is getting old. But as per your suggestion, I've been 'dealing with it'. In fact I would like to take the opportunity to sing the praises of a pair of items your peeps have provided for me that have made my frigid morning commute more tolerable, if nowhere near actually enjoyable:
The Pearl Izumi cold weather skull cap I received as a free gift back in February. It's going for $29.95 on RealCyclist currently. RealCyclist.com features Nieman Marcus level over-pricing; only chumps buy from Realcyclist. I think Matt may have told me that at some point but like lots of things in life I had to learn for myself. On this occasion though, the $30, had I paid it would have been more than reasonable. They say in cold weather 20% of your body heat escapes through your head, I suspect a certain number of IQ points do as well as I have felt pretty dumb riding a bike on more than one recent morning ride to work. But the skull cap (which looks vaguely reminiscent of WWII German infantryman's helmet, there's really no denying it)
works spectacularly well and with your bike helmet covering it nobody knows you look like a NAZI underneath.
Item #2: Tifosi Optics Q2
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These babies were listed for $59.99 on Realcyclist (see what I mean about the mark-ups?) and an urgent text message from Matt got me in on the BonkTown deal, though I want to say I got them for $16. Whatever it was, it was (again) more than worth it. I didn't have any clear non-prescription glasses and after losing a freeze-dried contact lens on a windy recent pre-dawn ride I was in the market for some non-tinted eye protection. They claim to be fog-proof and they probably are if you're riding in reasonable temperatures. I'll let you know as soon as we experience a few of those. But they do do exactly what I need them to do and they do it well.
So I say to Ms Layfield and her crew at Backcountry.com (and their various sister websites), thanks for helping me deal with Mother Nature's unwillingness to let go of winter. If weather.com is to be believed there may be some riding weather in our immediate future: Looks like Mother Nature will take take one last parting shot at Utah cycling in the form of a mid-spring snow storm (they actually issued a winter storm warning on Friday; are you still allowed to do that an April 29th?) and then it's home free, and none too soon. We have less than 6 weeks until the Rockwell Relay. May is going to have to be a thousand mile month for each member of team SoP if we want to be anywhere close to prepared for what's coming. So happy riding boys, take your pseudo-apology from Jill Layfield and your tentative promise from Mother Nature and run/ride with it. Talk/Blog soon, (im)deebers |
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