Freezing My Asphalt: Bike commuting in the raw weather.

 

This is the second entry in The Commuter Chronicles.

I have been writing about how I have been getting to and from work as a bike commuter (and sometimes as a runner) in order to exercise more and pollute less. This entry explores how I deal with riding in the darkest, coldest times.

Thick frost on the glass frames darkness, a streetlight, the mountain of plowed snow across the street.

The phone says it’s 7 degrees outside. My body says, no way in hell, I’m biking through this to work. But then I think about how I’ll answer the question waiting for me when I walk in the door: “How did you get here today?”

Thirty-six hours have passed since the last flakes fluttered out from the monster blizzard that pile-drove its way into Connecticut. The roads are cleared — sorta. Just don’t count the 100-foot patches of compacted snow. Also, ignore the frozen canyon walls the plows left behind and the buried margins that leave a non-existent gap between the bike and traffic lanes. I sip my coffee, and I factor in the extra time I’ll need to take the less-trafficked back roads. I unseal the handwarmers.

Visibility

Learning to deal with weather has been the most consistent, and interesting challenge I’ve faced as a New England bike commuter. It is a challenge I relish. I have learned new ways to dress, and to anticipate what my body will need exerting itself on a freezing January morning versus a June afternoon. I dance with the changing seasons. Those who encase themselves in climate-controlled vehicles, complete with headlights and seat warmers, are sitting it out.

In the sun’s absence I rely upon technology for seeing and for being seen.

There’s a bicycle light, a $60 gadget, and literal pale imitation of what the sun provides for free. Other than the bike itself, it is the most expensive item in my bike commuting arsenal. For years, I used either a cheap headlamp (not so comfortable when combined with a helmet) or a rechargeable flashlight attached to my wrist with rubber bands. The latter, was actually, better than the headlamp, but remained a consummate pain in the neck.)

Note to people just starting bike commuting: you absolutely don’t need a bike light if you want to save the money. It sure is nice to have one, though. I’ve found that lights that were perfectly serviceable for a night hike simply don’t cut it for a bike ride, where the faster speeds require a brighter beam to see the road ahead. Now that I have a stronger light, I pedal with more confidence, and find myself hitting the brakes less cruising down hills.

I still haven’t bought myself a similarly high-end taillight, for the excellent reason that I am cheap. I usually rely on a blinking solar lantern that I have rigged off the back rack and a red blinking wrist band. Neither of these will help me be seen better in daylight, though I do wear bright colors to help me stand out.

Dressing warm, dressing weird

I begin the roll down the crunching street by the headlight. Orange glow pools along the southeastern sky; stars, then planets dissolve in the flood of dawn.

The frigid air stings the exposed flesh around my eyes. I’m dressed for the cold ride, though not in comfort. My body is encased in a menagerie of equipment, including kayak gear. These include a neoprene balaclava hood, designed to keep me warm in frigid water immersion.

The hood is thin enough to fit easily under a bike helmet, but it still creates a bombproof layer against the wind.

Pogies are another piece of kayak equipment that has served me well biking. Also made of neoprene, pogies wrap around a paddle shaft and create a toasty pocket for the hands. They fit imperfectly around bike handlebars, but they buffer the wind, and work well with mitts and handwarmers.

Then there is the surgical mask. Not only do these tragically politicized symbols of pandemic times protect against airborne viruses, they also can take the edge off a brutal draft. I’ve only worn surgical masks on the coldest days. I accept the fact that it will be half-frozen and ruined by the end of the ride, but it is a cheap item to replace. I generally ride with masks that have reached the end of their useful lifespans. One disadvantage: fogging makes it impossible to ride with both glasses and mask on, so I end up stowing the former item in my fanny pack.

I can steer a bike competently enough as a two-eyes and accept crappier eyesight in exchange for feeling in my cheeks.

Moving from head to torso, my garments are more conventional. I have a flashy neon windbreaker over a puffy layer. Warmth, plus visibility. I don’t always wear the extra reflective vest, but do today, due to the reduced margins and dangerous driving conditions.

So far, the few cars on the roads have passed slowly and left ample room. Here and there, the tires crunch over fresh snow, and I stay in low gear. Nothing has stopped me yet.

The snow pants I wear are almost overkill. I can feel sweat beading on my legs as I crank the biggest hill, but I am infinitely grateful for them as wind whips around me when I swoop down an accompanying grade.

Footwear turns out to be my biggest gear mistake. My slides, perfect for dressing and undressing quickly, are simply not up to six miles of riding in the coldest conditions, even though I am in my warmest socks. I scold myself for not wearing boots as the stinging wind lashes helpless toes.

Door to Door to Door

By the time I reach the last uphill, I am happy for the warmth of effort.

The back wheel spins out on an icy drift. Clenching teeth, I hold the handlebars in place and inch my way past.

I crest the hill and the destination is in sight. I think of all the days when I’ve ridden my car and my coworkers tell me, “Of course you rode in. You can’t ride your bike in this!

I hope someone asks me today. I’ll let them know the score.

The beams of sunrise play through the spectral winter branches. I almost feel the warmth. There are hints of spring, in spite of the obscene cold. Earlier in the year, it was still dark when I got to work. The bird songs seem new and decadent to me. I crouch down for the final descent.

The parking lot is empty. I don’t bother locking my bike, but key myself directly into the building and pull out my phone. Of course, there was an email — sent out about the time that I was taking my bike down the apartment steps – explaining that the poor road conditions have bought everyone a day off.

I stomp around until I get some life back into my extremities. I climb back into the saddle, going home. Woodsmoke, lit DayGlo orange from morning light bright, billows up from a chimney. I ride along the frozen Mystic River where plates of brine ice have shattered up against the rocks in lucent piles. I feel my brows frozen too. At least my legs are still moving.

I think about warm blankets.

 

“

 

A Night in Pachaug

Enchantment One

Awareness of large predators is, apparently, one of those basic instincts that has dulled for me over time. It took me almost a minute for me to grasp the significance of the large gray form, close along the roadside with fangs bared.

My distracted, 21^st century mind was focused on my friend Phil, who I was convincing that we weren’t lost, that I had been in these woods a hundred times. I could get us to our destination easily. We had just stepped off the trail to a gravel road, an obvious shortcut (or was it?) in the middle of Pachaug State Forest. Middle afternoon was giving way to late. The February sun was still a couple hours away from checkout, yet there was a menace to the shadows pooling beneath hemlocks, those skeletal woods where no birds sang. Bare deciduous trees afforded fractured views of the gray hills, and long-abandoned farm walls. There was plenty of landscape to go around. At over 26,000 acres, Pachaug is Connecticut’s biggest state forest.

Even, as I pondered exactly where in those 26,000 acres we might be, my attention zoomed in toward the foreground, the spot right behind Phil’s feet.

“Uh, Phil, you might not want to turn around right now,” I said.

Of course, he did exactly that. The creature was right out of Grimm’s fairy tales, an Eastern Coyote, sprawled out dead. A wound in its side hinted at a mortal injury. Perhaps it had met a speeding ATV earlier. Another distracted mind.

“Whoa! Of course, I’m going to check this out!” Phil exclaimed.

We were on a short overnight doorstep adventure. We had started from our homes in Mystic and pedaled our bikes into North Stonington, about an hour’s ride, so that we could camp out at a nearby lean-to and hike around. Phil, a longtime friend, has climbed in the Andes and Himalayas and is no stranger to the extremes. This adventure was a meant to be a simple getaway however, not an epic

It had been months since I’d spent a night outdoors. Although I had taken brief requiems biking and hiking in nature, I hungered for a larger pilgrimage, a pilgrimage where I could take a break from distracted thinking and contemplate small enchantments. Such wonders included the coyote corpse, grotesque, beautiful, and a reminder of the wilderness character that never left our state.

Eastern Coyotes are, in fact, hybrids, between coyotes and wolves – the thinking goes, and so it was unsurprising to see resemblance between the Canis latrans specimen at our feet and the scourge of Little Red Riding Hood. Attacks on humans are vanishingly rare. Yet, buried instincts had surfaced at last. The coyote’s broad muscles and sharp teeth gave me pause.

The corpse made a fitting ambassador to Pachaug, which has always seemed a little strange, to me, a little dark. The many fens and hollows lie beneath towering, schist escarpments, thrown together, as if by sorcery. Small family graveyards lie moldering beneath snags.

Enchantment Two

Ice stalagmite in Bear Cave

When I was a kid, my dad and I spent many trips wandering these woods looking for Bear Cave in North Stonington. Before the Internet heyday, there was far less information than there is now. We got lost plenty of times. Eventually, we found Bullet Ledge, a ship-like bulwark of fractured rock that rises above the trees. Halfway up the ledge, we found an opening.

Back at the coyote, I mapped a rough sketch of how I could get back to the cave. My mistake had been following a reroute on the Narragansett Trail, which missed the cave, apparently. Instead, we followed the road, in what I hoped was the right direction. I made an informed guess at an intersection, and in another 20 minutes we were back on course.

It was Phil’s first time inside the cave. I always enjoy taking newcomers up the steep path up Bullet Ledge and then casually stopping next to the cave opening. Much like a dead coyote, it’s very easy to miss. Once upon a time, Phil had heard, there really had been a bear inside the cave. A group of natives led a colonist to the spot – so he could shoot it dead.

We clambered inside, where there was the familiar musty darkness, tiny dribbles of groundwater percolating from the top of the hill. The cave goes in 30 feet or more. It was nothing new for me, However, I was most taken by some of the ice formations at the cave mouth. Icicles were utterly smooth and clear. Low afternoon light struck orange fire within the crystalline enchantments. An icicle stalagmite was perfectly symmetrical, clear, and balanced, with utter improbability, on a narrow base. It was an elongated teardrop. It was an alien shrine.

Phil emerges from Bear Cave

Camp

Enchantment Three.

We hiked swiftly back to the shelter where we’d left our bikes. The wood we gathered earlier waited by a fire pit. We were on a ridge, and I could see miles in all directions, including still frozen lakes and swampland, out to the surrounding ridges. In the last six hours, we had only seen one family out hiking, one off-roader. It wasn’t a bad record for Connecticut.

As the sun lowered, we coaxed wettish twigs into sullen flame, and then cheered as the fire blossomed over the larger branches.

Phil graced me with a beer. I balanced a pot of creek water on a grate to make couscous dinner.

Outside, the twisting morass of trunks and forest branches compressed to a two-dimensional print against orange horizon and darkling blue. Planets emerged. Stars winked into existence. Well-being trickled into my restless mind. To fill completely, I’d need more time. A lifetime.

Owls boomed from distant trees. I smiled at the night.

Enchantment Four

The dark blue and gathering orange framed the branches again. I enjoyed seeing the last night’s show repeat itself, but in reverse.

Woodpecker staccato Boodooboodabooop! Badabadapop! resonated through the forest. Small chirping birds raised their voices at last.

Fungus on a cut log made a soggy Christmas wreath.

Phil and I talked about the owls we’d heard last night. After I conked out, he claimed to have heard some coyote yips as well – at least it sounded that way. After a while he hit the radio, and why not? I wanted to hear the latest about the troop build ups.

Wolves everywhere. Circle the wagons.

I raised a fire on the embers of the last, brought water to a boil. We drank our coffee, packed the bikes, and rolled out.

Rare Ice

As the blood moon hung in an ice sky above Long Pond, the forces of the rare and the strange were weaving together a different, yet just as singular phenomenon — one that I would discover by the light of the next day. 

What was rare (other than the strange moon) about that evening?

The temperature was one thing.

When the rain had been falling the previous morning, it had been close to 50 degrees in Ledyard, Connecticut. Yet, all that water spilled out on the layer of black ice over Long Pond, a remnant of the freezing conditions earlier. As the rain let up, the wind began to howl.

Gale winds ripped along the surface, but could only stir up the tiniest waves as they tormented the inch-deep water. Here was a dark patch racing over ice, converging there with another patch, and then exploding away. The theatrics were beautiful, but they held no match for the relentless cold dropping into the valley.

Between afternoon and midnight, the temperature bellyflopped from 50 down to five degrees.

The new day saw the rainwater frozen, consolidated to the ice below.  This new surface seemed smooth enough (and firm enough) from the family dock, that I regretted no longer owning any ice skates that fit.

It was rare that Long Pond ice was thick enough to go out on however, so I thought about ways to keep it interesting. 

With a foam sled under one foot, and ice studs strapped to the other, I could kick myself along scooter style. I found I could move quickly,  if awkwardly, around this way. Since I was the first one going out on the ice, I took the additional precaution of wearing my drysuit and life vest and carrying an ice axe to pull myself out of unexpected holes. I moved away from the dock and found that as I went further along, the ice got rougher.

 I was leaving the shelter of the peninsula to the north, entering the place where the wind had blown full power the day before. The gusts had contorted the thin layer of rain-water into strange branching patterns and the cold froze it into place. 

I thought about how the little surface water had trembled beneath the cold wind, then subsided. There was cruelty to this art, but it was no less mesmerizing for it.

The rough texture forced me to stop scootering and walk like a (semi) normal person with the foam sled under my arm, looking down at how the patterns changed as I walked around the lake.

A point jutting out in the water made a crisp line in the ice, where it was dark on one side, lightened by bubbles on the other side. 

The ice got thinner here as I got closer to running water by the dam. Still, the sight of a completely new, strange type of ice lured me closer to the danger. Here, the fluttering surface water had condensed into little mountain ranges. The mountains were angular, almost art-deco looking to my eyes. In another place, the ice was foamed up in a series of intricate fractal curves. 

A couple feet away, the landscape reminded me of something closer to the tall Lake Superior smashups that I used to admire. Here the ice was clashed together in six-inch fins, curves radiating along the surfaces as though they were translucent topo maps.

I watched, uneasily, as water oozed out beneath the ice and lapped the island shore.

I scooted myself back to thicker footing, then started walking back toward the dock.

A gray figure was walking out on the ice now too. As the figure approached, I saw that it was my father.

The wind had begun whipping mightily. Little lines of powder whirled down the lake, twisting into snow devils. It was too bad we didn’t have our skates. Years ago, when the wind had been like this, we’d had held a tarp between us and ripped high-speed down the ice. 

Now, we had to find other ways to get in trouble.

We walked across Lantern Hill Road to Bush Pond where the ice was thick enough — at least to start.

The black ice was smoothest in the sheltered area where we started walking, but further out it developed the same branching texture I’d seen on Long Pond. 

We rounded the point to the cove where the waterfall was. It was even more frozen than I had expected. One night and one day of single digit temperatures had turned the 10-foot drop-off into a corrugated white-wall of ice. 

“There must’ve been an ice dam that made the stream go around.” I said. “It widened the whole thing out.”

Lily pads and milfoil were suspended in the water beneath our feet as we walked into the cove. Closer to the waterfall, I saw another shift in ice morphology. The cracks looked thinner, the bubbles closer. Hell, it wasn’t just the way the ice looked; it felt springy now, like a bamboo floor, no longer hard tile underfoot.

“We should back up,” I said.

But it was hard to find anyplace to go ashore. Warm water from the stream had seeped all along the north side of the cove. Finally, I found a place that looked like it might be firm enough. I scooted on the sled, maybe 15 feet away from shore. The ice was feeling springy again, I heard a crack. 10 feet away now. 

I could turn back, but I really want to get closer to the magnificent waterfall.

The ice cracked again and I then I was in thigh deep mud water.

“I’m fine,” I called to my dad. “This spot probably isn’t going to work.”

I turned back around. In the drysuit, the water didn’t affect me much. I could smell the sulfurous rot of the shallows where my feet had sank in the muck. I pulled myself up using the axe, only to have the ice break away again. I pulled up a second time. This time, it was thick enough.

I decided I wanted to try another time back at the mouth of the stream. My dad, who was not wearing a drysuit, hung back on thicker ice. 

I scooted back onto the sled. The ice chunked and protested again, but this time, it held long enough for me to scoot over to a log. I balanced my way across and onto shore where the waterfall stood. The modest falls had armored itself in massive sheets of ice. A rooster-tail of water careened over the top and dribbled down the front of the frozen forward column. The bulk of the flow was beneath, however, making a soothing shushing sound like water on a pebble beach.

Compared to the tiny, angular craftwork of the lake ice, this sculpture was far more freeform and bulbous, an expression of pouring, rather than standing water. 

I felt ice forming around the pants where I had plunged in. If I lingered much longer, I was going to get frozen into the installation.

As I thought on the qualities of different ice that I’d seen in different corners of Long Pond and Bush Pond, I decided that the complexities in the neighborhood ice deserved an entirely new field of study.  For the final exam students get different chunks of ice — and then try to deduct which corner of the lake they had come from. They would draw up a map that showed how the wind gusts had whirled around different landmarks around the shore during the night of the blood moon. The map would identify the sweet spots where the lake dynamics had forged out the most exquisite diamond ice. 

Ice historians would examine the unique series of events, that led to a thin water layer, freezing on top of the ice on one particularly windy, icy night. Such circumstances seem at least as unique as those required to make a perfect diamond. The final product would be even more valuable for being so short-lived. The ice was definitely more anomalous than the entirely predictable consequences of Earth, moon and sun lining aligning to create the blood moon. 

When I think of it that way, I don’t feel so bad that I slept through the whole thing.

Over The Top

Mazda pimped out with yaks

Bear with me. There's a story here, but first I need to get something off my chest.

Connecticut might be about the 50th most hard-core state. The "land of steady habits" is not usually the first place that comes to mind for seekers of X-TREME outdoor activities. There are no mountains over 3,000 feet, no big ski areas, no forest fires, earthquakes or other entertaining forms of devastation. Do you like surfing? Fuhgeddabout it! Way back when, some asshole  invented Long Island, thereby screwing Connecticut out of its oceanfront. 

Other places have dangerous animals—grizzly bears in the Northwest, alligators in florida cougars (both kinds) out in California. Over here, we have fisher-cats, three-foot animals that look like lemurs. Now that these interesting animals have started to return to the region, people go on lockdown every time they hear about them in their neighborhoods. There are yet to be confirmed reports of a fisher eating someone's face off, but when there's nothing to worry about, people will worry.

Most of the rivers here are also a yawn. The silty meandering bodies of water are fine if you want to put in some miles in your kayak, but whitewater is tough to find and often seasonal.

 A couple of weeks ago my friend Andrew and I decided to try out a Roaring Brook in Canterbury, which is supposed to be a fast  moving, badass class four. If we'd read the water gauges properly, we would have known that we were in for a slow moving, lameass trickle.

Our hope that this would turn into a killer torrent downstream turned out to be wishful thinking

After 20 minutes negotiating shallow river, we heard the thunder of falling water up ahead. At the other end of a millpond was a large, concrete dam. The water ran over the lip and  fell for an unknown distance down the other side. Andrew and I paddled up to the edge and got out of our boats.


I looked over the other side, where the water dropped about 15 feet into dark pool below. 


How deep?  I wondered, trying to envision what would happen when I paddled over. 


So far, the kayak trip had been a mixture of boredom and frustration. What was supposed to be a badass Class 4 river had turned out to be a feeble trickle between rocks and branches. We'd already had to get out of the boats a couple of times because we were scraping bottom. Turns out that we had misread the info online about the river height, and it was barely a tenth of what it was supposed to be in order to ensure a good ride.


With disappointment behind us and lameness in front of us, the dam was really the only opportunity for excitement on the trip. Of course, it would hardly be worth the extra excitement if I hit rock and broke my ankles or flipped and hit my head. I tried to think of a conclusive method that would allow me to weigh potential risks, versus feeling like I chickened out.


A couple things gave me confidence though. One was that I had dropped from that height out of a kayak once before. While I was with the Kayak Club at NUI Galway in Ireland, they had loaded each of us into kayaks, put our spray skirts on and thrown us over a bridge. I was the first to go, and had some nerves about what would happen to me. .


"You guys do know what you're doing right?"
"Just paddle hard when you hit the water, you'll be fine."


With that, they slid my boat off the railing and I dropped into the canal below. The kayak sank so that my head was submerged and water went up my nose. Also, the spray skirt broke, and the kayak got filled halfway to the brim. But I had lived, and it was awesome. 


I think about those crazy bastards sometimes. To say they were skilled would be an understatements. These guys could do a roll in whitewater. They could do pushups with their kayaks in the water. Also they had a reputation as the drunkest club on campus, which was saying something at a university in Ireland. I once had to miss one of their trips out on a river up in Donegal and the next day I heard that someone had chipped a tooth, someone else had a broken collarbone. Shit, that must have been some dangerous paddling. I thought. 


Actually, the tooth was the result of dancing on, and falling off a table in the course of heavy drinking. The collarbone belonged to a guy who had decided to get in the water seriously hungover. Surprisingly, this decision had led to poor results.


People who display the best decision-making generally consult the internet. There's a picture of a guy going over the dam and he had lived to write the post. Thus, it was only logical to conclude that the dam was a safe bet--in any boat and in any conditions. 


I had noticed that there had been about three feet of  water going over the edge in the photo, instead of three inches, which was what I saw in front of me. Immaterial.


I got back in my boat and paddled away from the dam so that I'd have some speed

I couldn't be as cool as this guy. There was only a narrow trickle in the middle when I went over.

I got my boat up to top speed, aiming for the narrow spillway. Over the top I went and the nose pointed strait down. Before I'd had time to appreciate being airborne, the front of the yak crashed into the rocks, probably about three feet below the surface. I lurched forward out of my seat, and broke my left foot peddle. 


The kayak was afloat. I was totally uninjured. It was also nowhere near as cool as the picture I'd see, or getting pushed off a bridge for that matter.


I had Andrew ready with my cellphone camera, but honestly haven't figured out how to get the photo onto my computer. The pic proves about as much as the latest Lochness shot, so I'll just let it go. You'll just have to take my word that, yes, I did actually paddle over a drop and hit a bunch of rocks.


Afterwards, we realized that there were several ways we could have tested the water depth other than with the nose of my kayak. One way would be using the rope we had, using a rock for a weight. Also, we could have taken a kayak down there and probed around with a paddle. 


Then again, the two of us have made some less than brilliant decisions before, such as almost getting killed trying to scuba dive with a backpack full of rocks and a bucket overhead.


The cool thing was that though my judgement was incredibly poor, it also yielded almost no consequences. Even the peddle that broke off reattached easily. Maybe next time I'll do it hung over.