I am officially tired of winter: Errandonnée #1

Another year, another Errandonnée from MG at chasing mailboxes. 12 errands, 12 days. Starting today. As usual, I'm going to try to hit all the categories. Kind of looking forward to "You carried WHAT on your bike?" You've got until the 16th to fit them all in, should you wish to play along at home.

Even though there's only one errand here, this post is a bit long. However, it has it all: biking, ranting, craftiness, and science. Yay errandonnée!

It's been solidly in the negative teens to twenties for months. Yesterday, we had a brief lift up into merely freezing, only for it to plunge back down just in time to start off this year's errandonnée with yet another bitterly cold ride to work.

I am officially tired of it being winter. Specifically, I'm tired of the snow and putting on an entire outer layer just to ride to work. They keep me toasty warm, to be sure, so I'm glad of them for that reason, but it adds an extra 10 minutes to the commute to put them on and take them off at the other end. Also the number the headband and face mask are doing to my skin is another story.

Last fall, the city upgraded the bike lanes on Wellesley to separate them from the rest of the traffic. Initially, I was worried about what would happen during the winter, but they've been pretty good about plowing them -- sometimes even before the car lanes. They need to work on getting rid of snowbanks that tend to block the entrances (although it could be worse); there have been a few occasions where the lanes have been made unusable because of snow pushed out of adjacent driveways (the east-bound stretch between Church and Jarvis is particularly bad for this) and one memorable morning they plowed snow into the lane (it was clear by the time I went home). But what I met going home today takes the cake:

Excellent job, city. It wouldn't have mattered as much if it hadn't been for ALL THAT SNOW blocking the way out. Naturally, I was already in the lane before I saw the sign was also in the lane. I had to wait for a bunch of cars to go past before I felt safe pushing my (heavily-laden) bike over the snow bank and into car traffic. I hate when drivers block the entrance or exit to the lanes without thinking "hey, can a bike fit past here? Am I being incredibly rude by leaving my car here?"

Hint: the answer is usually yes.

On the whole, though, the separated lanes have been a godsend for biking in the winter. I could do without the over-salting, and we really need to figure out what to do around driveways and alleys, but as you can see the double snowbanks actually give an extra layer of separation.

(Lest you think I have been spoiled separated-lane-wise, only the Wellesley part is separate, and therefore plowed. The park at QPC has been a crap shoot; it spent most of the winter unplowed, then one day they plowed half of it, then two days ago they plowed the whole thing. In the afternoon. So bizarre. The Harbord lanes, naturally, were completely untouched all winter.)

Rant over. Happy thoughts. Meterologists are promising me warmer temperatures after today, which means I can soon leave off the face mask and that should I show you what I did to it while it's still timely. You may have noticed a cheerful addition in the picture above. I finally found some iridescent fabric paint and spent a happy hour painting snowflakes on the neoprene cheeks.


I've been meaning to do this since I got the mask last year, but I've been looking for iridescent icy blue fabric paint. It doesn't seem to exist. I finally caved and got this pearly stuff. I could have bought a pot of blue as well and mixed the colour I wanted, but that would have been way too much leftover paint.

I used a toothpick to paint the lines because I didn't have a brush, but it allowed me to paint idiot-proof straight lines and get a nice feathery look. I cleaned up any stray or ill-judged paint marks using a Q-tip dipped in water. Press with a hot iron for 5 minutes, and the paint is set.

Note that real snowflakes always go in 6s - any snowflake that has been divided into 8 is a false snowflake. Because science.

More science: this winter I've been using reusable hand warmers from Lee Valley. They are fun. A bit big, and I find them too hot to use without glove liners, but there's no waiting for them to get warm enough to use, they mold to the shape of your hand, and if you have the facilities at work, you only need to bring one pair with you. Plus? reusable.

I took a video to show how they work. I sped up the dissolving part. You're welcome.

What's going on? Well, the liquid is a supersaturated solution of an edible salt called sodium acetate in water. The metal disk provides a nucleation site (like with Mentos and Diet Coke), which causes crystals for form. As they form, they give off heat. To reset the pad, you drop it in boiling water until all the crystals have dissolved (ask me how I found out that if any solid bits are left, the solution will recrystalize). Then as it cools (slowly) to room temperature, the supersaturated solution won't reactivate until you tell it to.

Nifty!

To make this whole setup perfect, I'll thread some conductive thread through the fingers of my glove liners so my fingers will stay toasty warm. That will be a project for next winter.

Errandonée tally
Work: JCI (10.4 km)

Total Mileage: 10.4 km/6.5 mi
Total Categories used: 1