Extreme Winter Bicycle Commuting New York City

BICECYCLING

Winter is Here

Last Wednesday on my daily bicycle commute to west 36th street I had become aware that I was in my 55th  Winter!
I commute everyday on my Easy Racers Recumbent Bicycle in New York City. I ride north on the West Side Bikeway in NYC. There's almost always a very strong headwind coming out of Canada!

We had a temperature of about 22 degree's with  30 to 40 mph winds, not that  its a big deal after all I ride kinda of inside my bike with a face shield.The face shield is key,keeping the wind off your face is like having a built in heater! Anyway I got to Chambers Street and all of a sudden my pedals were just spinning freely,did my chain come off? Did it break? Really cold temps can cause all types of weird malfunctions.I got  out of the bike and turned the peddles by hand , they were spinning freely in both directions(not a good sign).Seems my freewheel has finally gone kaput. So I sat down on my bike and kinda skateboarded it home to get my wife's recumbent.She's a little saner then me and uses mass transit when its freezing out so I knew her bike would be there.

I was freekin frozen by the time I got back to our now famous Battery Park City bike rack.Our bike rack is in the Coldest, Windiest spot possible in NYC, its in the wind tunnel @ Liberty st and South End Avenue.

From there you can see the waves on the Hudson River crashing ashore !

Of course all the locks were frozen SHUT from the rain we had just a day or two before. It became a real battle getting her lock to open. Finally I got it opened with my frozen hands,switched bikes and off I went(there's just no way in hell I was gonna take the subway).

My wife's recumbent is a stock Easy Racers Tour Easy without any fairings or body sock.After riding the first
100 feet I could really tell that I had no weather protection and a much slower ride. How awful is that!

I got to the office @ Chick Chack Bicycle Messengers and Delivery with no incident and was only about 20 Min's late,Not Bad.
 Riding without  (Fairings)))) is a real DRAG!!

When I got home I removed the my rear wheel so I could bring it home and install a new freewheel. After about 2 mins indoors all of a sudden it worked again!!

I had a funny feeling 

Beware of ICE in your Freewheels!

BTW, I wasn't the only fanatic out there!