Jack Frost nipping at your n…fingers

In my anticipation to ride and my sickness of feeling a growing muffin top from the holidays, I said ‘enough with it’ and opted to go for a ride last week. It was the 8th of January, we had been warned of possible snow and/or falling ice and the high for the day was 26 I believe. Most would read this and say ‘DUH! its too cold to ride a bike’ but you see, Santa brought me some wonderful winter riding gear for Christmas and I convinced myself that I would stay moderately warm on my quick ride. The winter gear that I’m talking about is a full body bib, yes ‘bib’, google it, that covers my skin from my ankles to the mid section of my stomach, arm warmers[which basically look like ninja gear for a character out of mortal kombat] that cover my skin from wrist to shoulder, two short sleeve jerseys, and a thin beanie hat to go under my helmet and cover my ears. Some of you may be laughing at this point because you’re beginning to picture me, a full figured guy, wrapped in spandex showing off my keg of a belly. Which is fine, I’ve come to accept the fact that my ‘super hero – looking’ outfit is a bit silly looking, especially on a person that doesn’t look like a machine, but I really don’t care, because I’m just trying to find a way to stay healthy, and wearing the alternative is only going to hinder my ability to achieve my goals. Wearing basketball shorts and a tee shirt don’t take you very far when every part of your body is bending and twisting to keep the pedals moving, and it causes other issues as well that I refuse to go into, just trust me on that one. Anyway, after getting suited up, I threw in my ipod buds, poured some hot water into my water bottles, mounted my trusty steed, and rode off into the frigid sunset.  It was about 4:00 in the afternoon, so I figured it was the warmest it was going to get before it got really cold and that I wouldn’t be gone long anyway. I began one of my favorite routes and hadn’t planned on going more than 5 miles or so, but once I hit one distance marker, I just kept continuing to the next, then the next, telling myself that I could turn around at any moment and head back. Once I passed my point of no return where the route wouldn’t give me an opportune loop back without scaling long hills, I started to really wonder why I couldn’t feel my finger tips. I had covered every part of my skin with the exception of my finger tips [and my face of course], assuming that I would need them to operate the shifters and tweak my cables as necessary. I didn’t think it was a big deal, until I really had to start pushing hard on the shifters with my palms to get them to click. For those of you don’t ride, you typically have to shift often on a road bike, especially around Greenville with all of the traffic and the ups and downs. So I began worrying a little that sacrificing the finesse in my shifting was going to really cause me to delay, not get through intersections quickly, or swerve when having to use my arm strength to shift my gears. At every stop light, I was sitting on my hands, blowing between them, shaking them, and doing whatever I could to get the feeling back in them again, nothing was working. At this point, I had about 8 more miles to go, which isn’t bad distance wise, but I had a lot of stopping and going between red lights and signs . Through the whole of this experience, my legs, arms and core were perfectly warm by the way; much like a walrus, my stored up blubber was pulling me through the harsh conditions for the time being. Through all of it, I was able to keep my momentum and eventually made it back to my house without swerving into cars or getting hit by another durango. I stumbled around the house to the garage where I then noticed that the second bottle of water, that I had filled with hot water mind you, was frozen from the front side to about the middle of the bottle. If I had opted to go 20 miles instead of 15, it would have easily been a brick. As my adrenaline quickly faded, I pulled myself upstairs and curled up on the couch and wrapped myself in blanket until I could get some blood back into my fingers and toes. I didn’t really get any frostbite but I was definitely teasing the line between having it and not. I haven’t gone out since, but HAVE gone and gotten some full finger gloves that will hopefully keep my flesh forks in operation until the end of another ride. I can’t bear to wait until Spring to burn the newly acquired calories, and I just hate to watch my bike collect dust while mother nature plays with Jack Frost. Wish me luck this week and keep your fingers crossed that the warm front hangs around for a little longer.