Where are you living at?

Fairbanks, Alaska.

Or is the formula you have wrong?

Nope. Formula is right.

I was totally freezing at minus 10 degrees celsius.

You have to dress for it. I imagine that we are better prepared in Alaska than you might be down there in wine country... Oh, wait a minute, I just assumed you were living in France because you are driving a Peugeot, and I can't imagine anybody from any other country in the world inflicting that upon themselves... Am I wrong?

Anyway, at those temperatures, you leave no skin exposed anywhere, and dress in enough layers to reduce wind chill but still allow enough breathability for perspiration to escape. The hard part is keeping the bike running (either motorcycle or bicycle) An air-cooled engine is most unhappy at those temperatures -- the cylinders and cylinder heads over-cool, causing the excessively rich fuel mixtures (required by the dense air) to condense on the cylinder walls, diluting the oil and eventually ruining the engine. On bicycles, you have to remove every trace of lubricant from all cables and derailleurs, and from the freewheel (else it freewheels in both directions!) and replace the grease in the wheel bearings and crankset with the lightest synthetic grease you can find. Even so, the rolling resistance increases dramatically (the tires do not flex well at that temperature) and the riding effort for a given speed is probably more than doubled.

(From Liufeng's post...) At those temperatures the snow and ice is so cold that it isn't slippery anymore.

What I think Tom meant to say here is that it isn't AS slippery anymore -- but as the tires get colder, so does their coefficient of friction, so you still slip and slide, just not as much as you would at 25 above zero (about -4 degrees Celsius). Of course the ice fog at those temperatures is so thick that nobody drives fast enough for it to matter much in any case...

You don't have to be crazy to live here.... but it sure helps.

tanstaafl.




"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"