#bikeschool

It was an arctic February day (-10 F) when I decided to get off the couch and go for a bike ride. It had been months since my last, but I was determined to kick Old Man Winter where the sun wasn’t shining.

Layers, face mask, goggles and gloves, I pedaled. My wife thought I was crazy. So did the neighbors. I loved it, and spent the rest of the weekend researching winter cycling gear. That weekend marked my addiction to icebiking. I continued biking through the Winter, taking pictures and facebooking the heck out of my adventures.

I also bookmarked a whole pile of blogs. It was a great opportunity to learn something new. Not the normal bicycle maintenance tutorials but stories about people, their bikes and why they ride them. After reading bike blogs for months I wondered if I should start one and be part of the story telling. So I asked some of my favorite bloggers why they did it. Most of their feedback is shared on my first post.

Months later, it’s a helluva lot warmer. In fact I often wish for snow crunching under my tires and a tug of hot chocolate Schnapps waiting at trail end. But, I’m enjoying the ride more than ever. I’m blogging about it and still love to read other people’s bike stories. I want to read them all.

That’s my #bikeschool lesson. There is no such thing as bad biking weather, only bad biking gear. Like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote: “Into each life some rain must fall.”

Now head on over to Loving the Bike & The Old Singlespeed for more #bikeschool fun. And, here’s an important note so get your iPads ready…

If you have a bike story of your own – lessons learned through cycling – blog or tweet about it using the #bikeschool tag so we can learn together.

…