Bike Snob - Anonymous [55]
The only real reason not to have fenders is if your bike is used mostly for racing, or if you’re riding off-road. (Getting a stick wedged between your tire and your fender usually ends badly for you and your bike. Plus, if you’re riding in the woods you’re probably not on your way to work so it doesn’t really matter if you get wet and muddy.) However, in many places it doesn’t even occur to people to use fenders. Here in New York City, for example, fenders are relatively uncommon—even on bicycles specifically designed with fenders in mind.
Once again, I blame the bicycle industry and their “high performance/high risk” sales pitch. Not only can it be tricky to install fenders on a lot of bikes, but people also see fenders as aesthetically displeasing, or “dorky,” or something to be removed if they were even on there in the first place, like reflectors and (ugh) pie plates. And as one of the most outspoken anti—pie plate crusaders in cycledom, the fact that fenders have become linked with pie plates in some cyclists’ minds is enough to make me openly weep. It’s like in A Clockwork Orange when they brainwashed Alex to hate violence but they accidentally made him hate Beethoven too. And I confess, I was once one of those people who thought fenders were unsightly and unnecessary. But eventually I could no longer ignore my wet buttocks, and now I can’t live without them. Sure, my race bikes are fenderless, but any bike I may be riding in street clothes must have fenders. And once I came to terms with the importance of fenders, I stopped thinking they looked bad, or “dorky.” Instead, fenders on a bike began to mean that the bike with fenders is actually ridden in all sorts of conditions, and bikes without fenders started to seem dorky instead. A fenderless city bike is kind of like the sleeveless T-shirt/fingerless glove combo to me now—it’s a bad parody of toughness.
Besides rain, the other thing that keeps people off the bike is cold. Different people have different tolerances for cold, and if you’re a longtime rider you probably know what yours is. However, if you’re a new cyclist, the cold can be daunting—more daunting than it should be. This is because your relationship to the cold is as a non-cyclist, so either you’re in a building or vehicle that is heated, or you’re just out in the cold walking or standing still. And walking or standing still is much, much worse than being in the cold on the bike. When you ride, you warm up pretty quickly, and on all but the worst days I’d much rather be riding than walking. Of course, this depends on wearing the right clothing. There’s all manner of expensive technical gear you can purchase (both bike and non-bike specific) but it basically boils down to this:
Wear a hat
You can get all sorts of synthetic bike-specific hats, but even just a wool one that covers your ears is fine.
Wear gloves
If you live someplace where there’s winter you understand gloves, so I don’t think it’s necessary to explain, but obviously you’re moving on a bicycle, so give some thought to wind-resistance as well as water-resistance. Also, they don’t need to be bike-specific, but just make sure if you’re going to rock the Freezy Freakies that they allow you to operate the controls.
Cover your feet
If you’re riding in regular shoes, wear warm ones, as well as warm socks. If you’re riding in cycling shoes, get windproof covers.
Wear a wind-blocking jacket
Whatever you wear should be windproof or wind-resistant on the outside. You want to keep the air inside warm and you want to keep the cold air out. Simple.
Pants
Wear them at all times.
Also, water-resistance is always good, and remember that when cotton gets wet it tends to stay that way, which makes you cold. That’s really it. If you’re racing or doing “serious” rides you’ll want to get the bike-specific technical stuff and to avoid cotton altogether, but if you’re riding for transportation you’ll do just fine in the Army-Navy store. It might take some experimentation, but you’ll figure it out pretty quickly. You’ll probably also