November Cycling Challenge 2014

[johnny847]

Thanks for the comments.  I have the same tires and am eager to try them.  Thanks also for the add.  I've updated my miles and joined the strava crew!  Stoked to keep this rolling.

Dude your mileage is awesome! It normally takes me two months to put that many miles on my bike. And in much colder conditions than me (Georgia).

[Kmp2]

Mwahahah!

Got out today -20C (~-5F), biked 5k round trip to the registry to renew my car registration. (And I am pretty sure they all thought I had a DUI, oh well).

I was biking over existing ice and through fresh snow. You couldn't see the ice under the snow. I was also almost exclusively on roads. Luckily a bike route with drivers that are used to bikers (albeit not necessarily @ -20), and on a road with wide wide shoulders :). I have dressing for the weather dialed in for about an hour outside at these temps. But I was still much too warm and sweating under the layers. My toes were just starting to get cold by the end of the ride.

PS studded tires are awesome (especially when you remember to let some air out and run them a bit soft)...

Hopefully I'll be up to a longer ride to work next week, anyways I thought you'd all enjoy a picture. If I can figure out how to post it.

[jordanread]

Bad. Ass.

Way to go. I think I'm going to do a picture section instead of comments for the challenge next month. It's way fun seeing how awesome we are all here. And looking at your gear, I must say, I am hugely bulky compared to you. Just got my card back today, so I'm ordering all the new stuff for when it's super cold. Fun fact, it turns out that all next week is going to be almost 60F. Might be 40 when I leave in the mornings, but I hardly need a coat for that. :-)

I'll update next months with my gear, costs, and any changes. I'll also probably post a little blurb on the thought process behind missing my savings rate goal on purpose, and all the ancillary awesomeness that I feel offsets that when it comes to biking.

Just a couple more days everyone!! Way to go.

[Kmp2]

Jordan - we won't talk about how much some of that gear cost...

Very little of it was bought for biking - most of it was for winter sports or my time working outside on a worksite up northe where I needed warm natural fibers (for heat flash reasons). I snowshoe, x-ski, downhill ski (although less of that now, it's too expensive), and occasionally winter camp. It was purchased over the course of a decade. We do have many months of winter here :)

The biking specific stuff I added was the balaclava (my normal head gear would not fit under a bike helmet), the hi-vis vest (and a hi-vis jacket), and really powerful bike lights. You don't need to be visible hiking in the bush. Then I splurged on the softshell jacket, it's biking specific, although I will wear it for other stuff, it's longer in the waist and arms... and awesome (but entirely unmustachian)

[jordanread]

All right everyone, I'm just finishing up getting the December sheet made. I added a new option to track the money you would have spent if you drove your mileage (similar to the metric for spirotot on the Summary page, but for each day, and for everyone). However, this option won't be added automatically during the import, so I'll get it setup manually for each of you, and then make sure that it persists.

Please post here if you want that option added to your sheet. If you would like an example as to how this looks, check out my sheet in this month's challenge. The "new" metric is column M, with data grabbed from columns T & U. It currently goes off of the master summary, but it can be changed on your sheet to match your vehicle's mileage (or use the IRS cost per mile - or any other amount you'd like to use).

Also, the chart functionality still only imports the historical monthly data, so for now, I'm going to change everybody's answer to "YES". If you have any issues with that, let me know. I'll have the December challenge up in a couple of hours.

[jordanread]

The new sheet is up!! Check out the details at this link.

Happy Cycling!!