So the one thing that gets constantly asked of me is this: you cycled in that?
For most non-cycling commuters, the idea that you would willingly submit yourself to the rage of the weather that makes up these isles mystifies them. There they are in their nice warm cars, trains and buses shaking their heads as some lone cyclist passes them...
Spring
Spring is wet. Very wet. It is worse than the wet of autumn and winter as it is wet interspersed with the promise of warmer weather ahead. Every sunny warm day when the lesser spotteds* come out is punctured by those artic winds and rain still shouting that they aren't finished with you yet.
You try and get your clothing right but you are either too warm or too wet, forgetting that important rule that you are water proof! In those rainy times I have to remind myself that if I came in on the train, I would be sitting at my desk with wet clothes rather than the nice dry ones I wear when I shower and change at work.
Thanks to cycling clothes, I am drier than most people coming in during the spring rains.
*lesser-spotteds: people who appear once the winds and rain look likely to disappear. Those empty lanes and roads you were used to are suddenly filled with a mixture of lack of fitness and too much fitness (thanks to their indoors trainers). They will scurry back into their burrows very quickly in April and May as the weather reminds them that it hasn't finished with the crap yet.
Summer
Summer is the pita especially at the very start. Just as you think it’s fine for shorts and one layer, that artic punch has one dying swipe at you. And you still haven’t left the rain, still come summer in full flow, at least you don't have to worry about being cold. Seriously, wet is nothing, cold is all.
So on those rare days when the sun is shining and the roads are cracking, you are peddling along only to be interrupted by the lesser spotteds and the rest of the fair weathers.
Don't get me wrong, it's great to see so many people on their bike but those with their fear of melting carbon, give of a whiff of arrogance that makes me want to scream: "You weren't there man. You weren't there when the winds hit, when the rains almost drowned us...you weren't there!"
.
Autumn
Speaking of winds, the first time I seriously encountered these was in autumn. Winds are rightfully called hills without benefits. You get plastered head on, speed dropping as fast as your gears as you try and keep some sort of speed up..and there is no downhill to compensate.
Even worse, if you cycle in an urban arena, quite often you can be cycling along, quite comfortably, thinking "oh good, not getting any headwind" then a gap in a building sends you flying left or right as the boreas keeps its promise to remind you that all you are is a person on a flimsy machine. To drivers reading, this is why we get particularly angry at windy times, we could just get blown into you thanks to your closeness, and...there..is...nothing...we...could...do to prevent it.
But, I hear you say, if the wind is at you on the way in, surely you get a tailwind on the way out?
I wish.
The gods will not like that! No, the gods will shift the wind around so that you get a repeat performance - especially if, like me, you commute on an east-west axis.
But….
But…
those days when the gods look favourably and push on your back...
Winter
Winter. When the dark comes to swallow you up. The crispness of the clear night, the silence of the cave.
Now, it could be that I was a December baby but I love winter. Some fear the ice - for obvious reasons, a fall on that is not pleasant. But I love the fact that you go out in winter leggings, layers and coat, a buff on your head, a buff round your neck ready to warm the face, big gloves on as you head out. Absolutely love that.
One winter, there was 24 hours of snow and I headed out in fresh powder, no cars, the darkness and dust baffling any sound as I crunched my way down a main road on my way to work - colleagues thought I was mad but, to me, it was lovely.
Of course, you get the usual rubbish that wrecks your mechanics , the constant cleaning to keep the bike going. the sheer crap that deposits on the road leaving you in the dark and cold having to repair a puncture, the appalling driving that seems to occur whenever conditions are terrible, the aforementioned ice.
Yet, when that caveman instinct takes over when you are out there in the gloom of the evening, when that instinct tells you to push it, there are predators abound, when that air hits the back of your throat and the traffic clears and you are you, alone...
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