Things to watch for on a winter bike ride, by Jeffrey Veen

Things to watch for on a winter bike ride

The San Francisco Bay Area has been pounded by storm after storm lately, but what's a little rain to stop me from cycling? Here are the things I rode past, around, or over during the last few days:

Numerous upended trees. Some enormous.
A landslide.
A dead fish. In the middle of the road.
A dead snake. Same road.
A live crab. A bit further on.
Water so deep on the bike path that it covered my bottom bracket.
Two teenagers hiding behind the north tower of the Golden Gate Bridge getting very close to third base.

This entry was written by Jeffrey Veen and posted 2 January 2006 at 5:47 PM. It was filed under Cycling, Personal. | View blog reactions

Comments

1. On 2 January 2006 at 6:13 PM soxiam wrote:

Nice! Be sure to leave that bike upside down for a while and (if you can) re-grease and re-pack that BB. I've been hearing about pouring down your way but couldn't guess how bad it was. Maybe you can be the first cyclist ever to get a puncture due to a live crab on the road.

2. On 2 January 2006 at 7:33 PM Zaur wrote:

i saw this on another website.

3. On 2 January 2006 at 9:32 PM Nick Cowie wrote:

I will trade you the dead fish, dead snake and live crab for the live posionous snakes I get to dodge a t least once a week.

The snakes like to warm up their bodies up in the morning, lying of the bike path and at a distance they look like fallen sticks/branches.

4. On 2 January 2006 at 10:39 PM Jørgen Arnor Gårdsø Lom wrote:

Zaur - If you saw this on another website, my guess is that someone is either ripping good ol' Jeff off; or riding a bike round the same route... Jeffrey is one of the best bloggers around, and I tend to think he's man enough to think up his own stuff...

And this is very good stuff... This is so funny, it almost makes it OK, that I injured my iPod-finger today... Almost.

5. On 3 January 2006 at 6:16 AM Mikhail Bozgounov wrote:

Nice!

Never seen a crab, fish and snake on the road, actually (well, a snake once, yes, but it wasn't on the road exactly;-)

Best part is that you ride in winter! Yeah, me and my wife, too, we ride in winter, but this is not very popular - most of the people "freeze" their bicycles in winter in the garage...

Keep cycling! ;-)

6. On 3 January 2006 at 8:37 AM veen wrote:

It's not that tough to ride through the winter in California, Mikhail. Even though we've had some pretty serious rain, the weather has been near 60f (16c). Not bad at all, really.

7. On 3 January 2006 at 9:30 AM Jernej wrote:

Oh well, what's 40cm (a bit over 1ft I guess) of snow to stop me ;)

It's always amusing when people look at you with pity in their eyes, thinking you're about to freeze your ass off on the bike. The truth is actually quite the opposite.
Whereever I'm going, I get there quicker, my shoes don't turn into a block of ice and I actually begin to overheat after 10-15min of riding. But nobody believes me. Go figure...

8. On 3 January 2006 at 11:55 PM veen wrote:

Zaur,

I will kindly refer you to the following Google search

9. On 5 January 2006 at 7:50 PM Brian McNitt wrote:

I went from riding through subfreezing winters in Chicago, to rainy winters in SF, to indoor CompuTrainer rides complete with ipod and TDF videos, to Tyler's weekday morning spin classes at Gorilla Sports in SF. The most effective for my training? Tyler's spin classes. I literally got two 60 minute crit level efforts in this week. No dead fish, snakes, crabs or soggy bottom brackets to deal with either. The bike is dry and the CompuTrainer is collecting dust at this point.

10. On 19 January 2006 at 1:14 PM Jan Roelof Veen wrote:

Hey sir Veen,

We also have a small site at blogspot, http://jrveen1.blogspot.com/
It was nice to see a tippicle dutch name( Veen)
at blogspot,

greetings and a lot off succes,

Family Veen

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Bio: Jeffrey Veen
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