Recently on Jill’s blog.

 It’s strange – Weather in Honolulu is 80 degrees and mostly sunny year round. You’d think that kind of environment would nourish a strong cycling community, but I encountered few bike paths and even fewer cyclists out and about in an entire day of riding. (excerpt from “Painless view of HURT 100“)

Her bewilderment is understandable, she rides in biting cold and freezing winds and on sheets of ice and snow. They get a few months of sun each year and the rest of the year the conditions are treacherous to ride in. You have to wear multiple layers of clothes just to keep your body from freezing and to avoid losing limbs to frost bite.

I always fin it difficult to explain to people that a little bit of sun (30+ C and high humidity is nothing) is not a valid reason for not biking. So you get sweaty, so waht? Companies in singapore are willing to spend tons of $ to air-conditioning their offices and shopping malls but they are unwilling to build bathrooms for people to clean up. I luckily work in a place with nice shower facilities. I am sure if one is willing to ride, they will be able to find solutions for cleaning up. Anyways, if you just commute a couple of kilometers, you do not need to shower at all.

It is usually difficult to appreciate your situation when you do not know the suffering on the other side of the fence. Cold weather may sound nice but you should read about the stories that Jill rides and imagine the situation in which she rides, I think it requires a lot of motivation and perseverance which is not needed in the kind of weather we enjoy in the tropics. 

Instead of enjoying the sunny and windy outdoors, we complain. What a curious bunch we are…

Related posts:

1. Riding in Rain
2. Courteous riding
3. Riding in traffic

This entry was posted on Friday, January 23rd, 2009 at 5:33 pm and is filed under musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.