What are your survival tips for riding in winter? With two days left in the month, we’re nearly finished our June Riding Challenge. Did you keep up your riding? For many of us it seems May was a more challenging month. The map below shows above average rainfall in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide in May, which hasn’t been repeated in June. It certainly has been cold though, with the coolest maximum temperatures since 2000! For more, have a look at the Bureau of Meteorology latest month report. What’s your take on riding this moth compared to last?
Please tell us the lessons you’ve learned from riding through the wet and cold of the darkest month of the year. We’ll compile your contributions to make a page of collective experience that will better arm us for the rest of winter. We’ve got a prize for the most valuable contributor. You can:
- leave comment at the bottom of this page
- comment on our Facebook page
- Tweet a micro-comment or link to a photo, blog or website
- email us.
Fancy a Twitter chat? We’ll be on hand Friday 1 July from 3–4.30pm (AEST) to tweet with you. Use the #rideinJune tag to identify your comments.
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On the bike I run a built in redundancy approach to my lights with two Radbot 1000 mounted on the seat stays (these are on in two different flash modes) plus I also carry a Planet Bike SuperFlash hanging off my saddle bag as a back-up. I can see the Radbots via quick glance back so can regularly check their status.
Up front I run a DiNottee 400 L plus carry a spare Fenix L2D with fresh batteries in my saddle bag.
On me, it really depends on the weather. In the wet I wear a cycling cap under my helmet which is very effective at keeping the rain off my glasses, a Showers Pass Elite 2 jacket, Seal Skinz waterproof gloves (jury is out on these), Showers Pass Storm Pants and BBB Waterflex shoe covers and oh Seal Skinz water proof socks. I don’t arrive dry but at worse a little damp. Still beats being wet and cold or worse.
Oh my commute is up to two hours each way and for example today was 1.5 hours into a 54 km/h headwind and it rained all the way (this is in Perth BTW :)).