Shame me all you want, I'm not biking my commute in 90/20 degree weather with a backpack full of stuff including a laptop and no reasonable way to listen to music when I have such a comfortable SUV-type car.
Admittedly, it can't be justified on purely utilitarian grounds. I do own a car after all.
Part of it is that I'm just addicted to cycling. But I'm also not strong enough to be a competitive cyclist, and don't live in an area with extensive mountain biking. So I have to look for ways to make it more interesting. I also love being outdoors during the winter, so I also go cross country skiing, or just take long walks.
Surely, folks who have engaged in real survival sports would laugh at me, but still, arriving at work on my bike at -20 F feels like I've been on some kind of an adventure. My friends think I'm crazy, but I remind them that regular people go to work, outdoors, in colder temperatures, and they survive. The old saying is: "There's no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing."
On the other hand, my spouse has a job where you have to pay extra for parking, so she either rides her bike or takes the bus depending on schedule. Right now during the COVID, the bus service has been cut way back, so it's 100% bike for her. My kids are both college students, and don't have cars, so a bike is their only option.
You bring up edge case after edge case. Yeah, -35C isn’t cycling weather but it’s also not something that most people who use cold as an excuse not to cycle to work ever experience on their commute. Most don’t transport sensitive musical equipment either. Or work somewhere they can’t hang a wet jacket.
There are circumstances where your arguments apply, but they’re none of the typical situations encountered by most people who are making excuses why they “can’t” cycle.
I bike thousands of miles a year. I love it. I also don't want to bike to grocery stores and restaurants. Sweaty in the summer, and we get -30F in the winter and our city tends to be very windy with wind chills down to -60F.
yeah, sure... try to drive 51 miles away on a bike in 100F in socal! Unless its colder weather and under 5 miles, bikes are useless. Let not talk about attire after a bike ride!
The thing people might not realize is that when you're exerting yourself, your body generates plenty of heat to keep you warm - it's really just a matter of keeping that heat contained. It's more akin to doing a winter sport like skiing, snowboarding, etc. than it is to sitting passively in a car.
During the school year in my area, temperatures can range from -40 to over 90 degrees F, pushing 100 if you count August activities like marching band or sports practice.
Biking simply isn't an option, not to mention during snow storms and heavy rains. Even the most die-hard cyclists I know around here aren't brave or foolish enough to go biking 10 or more miles in that weather.
I don't deny that sitting in a car in awful weather is more comfortable than cycling. I'm challenging cheap dismissals of cycling as a whole because the weather is awful for ten days of the year (unless you live in a place with daily tropical rainfalls or something), and I'm pointing out how people who live without a car deal with these things.
but then you present several arguments about how the car is safer.
I bike all year in a similar climate. Take a hot shower before you leave. It kills surface bacteria that produce odor. Change clothes when you get to work if you're really sweaty.
> the biggest issue is the fact that physical exertion makes me sweat
You specifically mentioned rain and snow before so that's what I addressed.
As you acclimate to the heat you'll sweat less. Also on a bike you naturally produce a breeze. With experience you can balance your effort and the cooling affect of the air to minimize how sweaty you get.
Most people drive to work and think that's fine and normal. I'm just saying what's stopping you from biking to work is not the weather but what you've decided to value.
The people who say that probably live in California (or equivalent) and can't fathom that some people live in places where weather is a thing.
Or maybe they're the kind of hardcore cyclists that wouldn't mind cycling in a Michigan winter or an Arizona summer. Good for them. But there's nothing wrong with needing an air conditioned enclosed vehicle to get around.
I happily commute by bike year round in Chicago, as do many other thousands of people that live in the city. It gets into the 90's in the summer, and well below freezing in the winter.
If it's hot I pack my work clothes and change (and shower if needed) at work.
If it's cold I dress warmly. It's amazing how quickly you warm up when pedaling more than a few miles.
If it's raining I wear a rain jacket, and the fenders on my bike keeps water from splashing up on me.
So no, weather is not an automatic fail. It's just a mindset change if you're used to be in the enclosed bubble that car provides.
Climate and infrastructure is what keeping me from using a bike for non recreational purposes. Continuous bike lanes, driver culture where bicycles are treated as equal on the road and temperatures that don't hit 40c.
I would like to point out that the people in those pictures are wearing short sleeves and it is sunny (and presumably warm).
As someone who had to scrape ice off of my windscreen this morning while the temperature inside the passenger compartment was creeping up from 1 degree above freezing, the inevitable suggestion that bikes are a better solution than cars is going to fall on my deaf ears. You're not going to get me to drive my very-young kids around in near-zero freezing rainy conditions in an open cargo bike with no heating. Sorry.
Don't get me wrong ebikes are great, but suggesting that we should all have bikes doesn't work if you don't live in California.or somewhere else where it is also mild and never very cold or very hot.
I can't imagine doing my 20KM commute over bike in -20°C (very common here in Edmonton,Alberta). It's sub-zero temperatures for easily 5 months of the year, with large amounts of snow. Even to the nearest train station would be quite an adventure in -20 with snow drifts.
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