Over the past couple of weeks here at the top end of the Prairie State we’ve seen daytime temperatures range from nearly 40° F down to 15°, the latter with a windchill taking the “feels like” temp down to 1°.
This is par for the course here in Northern Illinois - ask anyone with any experience out in the windswept countryside about the weather and they’ll probably say something like “if you don’t like the weather, wait a minute: it’ll change.”
What this means in practical terms is that each day is a new adventure in what to wear and where to ride. The clothing part I’ve discussed here before. But where to ride... that’s kind of it’s own thing. And the clothes can sort of figure into that as well.
For the first time in a very long time we’ve had snow coverage for an extended period of time. We had a snowfall towards the beginning of January and, although we’ve had a day or two with highs above freezing, it wasn’t sustained enough to melt it off. In our area roadways get cleared of snow and ice on different schedules. Main thoroughfares like state highways get cleared first, and then later - often days later - asphalt backroads may get cleared.
Maybe. It’s seems to me that county road departments do a bit of a wait-and-see to determine whether the temps will rise enough to take care of it without mechanical intervention. And here I should note that I’m referring to plowing down to the asphalt - they do clear enough to make them passable.
The gravel roads often don’t get cleared at all. This might be a source of frustration for people living on those byways (though most people out here have some type of snow-capable vehicle), but from the perspective of a cyclist who otherwise hates riding on gravel, it’s the one time of year those roads are really rideable. This because they are covered in snow and/or ice, and so don’t seem at all like gravel roads - their rocky light is hidden under a bushel, if you will.
Ice over gravel
But what is a smooth, solid surface at, say, 20-25° is a sloppy mess at 34°, and a brittle, crackling and crunching adventure down at 15°, particularly if it’s been on the gravel for several days of temperature changes. I enjoy the slip and slide of an ice-surfaced gravel road, especially as they also represent scenery in my area that I don’t see for most of the year because, well, gravel. But I have no interest in contending with the slop they become as the temperature rises.
Incidentally - those ice surfaced roads also provide an additional challenge for my rides. Because I’m on the trike I don’t have to worry about the machine disappearing out from under me (very much a thing for uprights, I can tell you from unfortunate experience... related to me by a friend, of course...). But - at least so far - I’ve never put winter tires on my trike - I’m running Schwalbe Marathon Plus tires. This means that to maintain momentum on the slipperier surfaces I have to eyeball the ice-road for rough patches to target with my rear wheel.
And it’s a similar effort, but with a front wheel for braking at intersections. These factors put some interesting challenge to riding in the winter that makes it more interesting, and further differentiates it from riding the rest of the year. And I’ll note that these challenging surfaces are extremely lightly traveled - in multiple rides this year and prior I’ve encountered few, if any, vehicles on these particular gravel byways in the deep winter months. Perhaps this is another reason they are not plowed clear.
Where this leaves me is choosing my ride routes based in large part on temperature: I’ll look on my device and ask the question “is today a gravel or asphalt day?”. For most of the rest of the year out here in the hinterlands it’s not the device I look at, but the wind turbines - there, as much as possible, I try to put the wind at my back for the trip home.
But this doesn’t always work either - because if you don’t like the weather out here, wait a minute...
…It’ll change.