Winter riding

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Following on from the roll call/ATGATT threads, prompts me to ask: Who commutes by bike all year round?

Those of you who do:

What do you ride? Do you make any alterations to it for winter?

What do you wear?

What does it have to look like outside the window in the morning for you to finally concede and not bike in?

etc etc

Mate of mine has commuted all year round, almost entirely on sports bikes, for 20 years or more. He used to live in a house with a steep drive and his only concession to the weather was if the drive was too slippery to get the bike down/up. I know he uses heated kit in winter now.

Reason for the thread, well, I'm commuting again, it takes me 40-45 mins each way on the bike whereas by train would be easily an hour & three quarters each way, not to mention at least three times the daily cost, so I'm angling at using the bike for as long as humanly possible!

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Reardy Mister said:

Its a BMW R1200RT and its sort of brilliant for commuting and sort of not that good.

I'm with you there - I'm on an ancient R1100RT at the moment, aka the Ark Royal, it has most of what you have except the heated bits. The elec screen is surprisingly useful, the non-folding mirrors are a surprising pita. I sat alongside a 12 at lights the other day and it definitely looks even wider than mine. I do OK on filtering though, plenty of people with smaller bikes who won't take gaps which I do.

Tall_Paul said:

Oh and the train is similar for me - 3 different trains and over an hour to get to work, £150 a month. By bike it's 35-40 minutes, £18 a week in petrol.

I was about to say you must live and work near me, but the train for me is more like £450 a month!

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Part of the reason I asked was that I "had" to drive in today, partly because I had a jab in the arm at 0750 which takes an hour or so to wear off, and also because I had to collect something on the way home. However, taking 75 minutes to get from Docklands to the A2/M25 junctions enough to convince me that I'll be riding as long as I can keep the damn thing upright.

The R1100RT is a big old bus but it's comfortable, not diabolically thirsty, and it has shaft drive. Plus plenty of weather protection. Also, I'm not remotely concerned about theft, and it it does fall over any time then, as long as I walk away, and hopefully can straighten it out enough to ride home, there's no great drama.

I was going to post a "what bike" at some stage but quite honestly I think I'll just use this until it dies. Which may be tomorrow or may be in a year's time!

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I'm Kent to London too, Docklands for me. I have actually seen someone on an FJR in AS kit a couple of times. What's the FJR like? It's starting to creep it's way up my "replacement bike" list.

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Stig said:

TDM 900

There's a theme developing here - the TDM is also on my shortlist (well, longlist, I need to distil). I've always liked these, they are another of the "unloved by the masses but very good" bikes IMO.

I haven't quite decided between a purchase of a used bike I can use and not have any concerns about, or something new (eg Tracer) on lease.

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^great post, thanks, and thanks to everyone else.

I'm pretty much Goretex-ed up (not sure that my Sidi Black Rains are goretex) and have just scored a bargain pair of OEM heated grips from eBay. I'm warm-blooded too, and I can particularly relate to being stuck in the car in traffic whilst bikes are passing - the previous two occasions I've driven in, my 40 minute bike ride home has taken 2 hours in the car. Planning to stick it out as long as possible.