Thank god we don't extreame weather like you guys i just could not handle it.
only extra stuff i take is gloves rain jacket overshoes.
We are truly the beloved of the Lord, you and I, Anto. See what a fine climate he gave us. Though a little of that there global warming wouldn't go amiss in the two weeks or so every year that there might be black ice in the shadows of high-flying hedges.
Studs, what studs? We don't have no stinking snow. But we do have a little black ice in the depths of winter, but so little of it that it becomes especially dangerous because it is too rare and unexpect to take routine precautions against it.
I know these lanes well, and can tell you where you will find the black ice. There's one place it is invisible because the sun is always in the wrong position to shimmer on it. Fortunately, it's on the uphill part of the ride (or it was then; new riding companions like bombing down that hill...) so I wasn't going too fast the first time I encountered it. I was on my Kranich, techinally "a unisex cross frame deluxe of the 1935 Locomotief design" which Gazelle kept in production until 1963 as their "priesterrijwiel" or priest's bike for old-fashioned clergy who wore those split cassocks the French call soutane -- images both new and towards the end of the photo essay historical at
http://coolmainpress.com/AndreJute'sUtopiaKranich.pdf -- but you can think of it as a mixte with an extra bar connecting the bottom bracket with the head tube. The Kranich thus offers a medium-low stopover, which is one reason I bought it in contemplation of advancing years. How painful the next maneuver might have been on a standard horizontal crossbar bike I leave to your imagination. When I hit the black ice, the moment I lost traction and with it steering, I put both my great big dirty boots with thick treaded rubber soles flat on the road to form a triangle with the rear wheel, the front wheel being irrelevant because it no longer steered, and gently the bike and I slid rearwards, fortunately not too far because we were gathering speed at an thought-provoking rate, until we got back onto the merely wet tarmac. I turned back, stopped first the wife of a farmer that said the police had already blocked all the roads to her house and she had to get to her children; I told her to drive slowly in a high gear and not to use her brakes if the car started sliding; she made it because a couple of weeks later her husband stopped me on the road to tell me I could ride on his land whenever I wanted. The next guy, in a big Audi, resented being stopped and told by a
bicyclist where he could and couldn't drive. He roared off uphill. I heard his crash though by then I'd ridden out of sight so I didn't see it, called it in, and before I reached the town first the police and then the local St John's ambulance passed me, in as much of a hurry as the road permitted.
***
When you reach a certain age, bicycle incidents (when I was an auto racer one could be ostracized for using the dread word "accident" -- I always used to dismiss even the reality with, "Oh, it wasn't a champagne moment.") are especially bothersome because you could break a hip, which would most likely put you off the bike forever, and lead directly and indirectly to life-threatening complications. It's a time to take ice, black or white, seriously, especially when it isn't spread from horizon to horizon, as in the George's photo, but patchy and unexpected. At the height of the winter, I can tell you, I study the hedgerows carefully against the inclination of the sun, because that is the best indication of where black ice will form and remain.
