9 December 2013

Generally the nice thing about living in Eugene is that the climate is relatively mild year round – making car-free living quite straightforward. But every now and again we get a cold spell, and this last week has been the worst I’ve experienced in the seven years I have lived here. Three years ago we had a two week period when it didn’t get above freezing, but it was dry so it was still safe to be out on the roads. This time around we received 8 inches of snow followed by temperatures down to a low of 2 degrees Fahrenheit. So although I have a bike set up with studded tires so that I know I can be safe on the roads, unfortunately I can’t say the same for the folk in big metal boxes, so if I don’t have to go anywhere, home I stay. But winter training for me always starts on December 1st, so I have needed to do something for exercise. I’ve never been a big fan of riding indoors – the beauty of bicycles is getting out in the world, and I always overheat riding on a trainer. But with the temperature in the garage under 40 degrees, I discovered that it made for quite comfortable riding. I am grateful to have a set of Oregon-made Inside Ride rollers, which are much nicer to train on than a stationary trainer. I ended up doing two hours today whilst watching a movie – my longest time ever riding indoors and it was really quite tolerable. I may need to repeat that for the next couple of days, but then we should be back to more usual Oregon winter weather – 40s and raining…..

With the aforementioned low temperatures in the shop, I have been catching up with design work and other inside tasks – including adding an additional website page with some of my design philosopy, which answers some of the common questions that come up.

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