How to get ready for winter cycling

Not all roads are plowed equally, so it's important to check if the roads you're going to go on are plowed before you take that route. And even sometimes when roads are plowed, the city will plow the snow into where cyclists would normally ride. Hi, my name is Sophie Waters. I'm a program coordinator at the Windsor Bike Kitchen. And today I'll be talking about a couple things that you need to know or should have to prepare yourself for winter riding, prepare your bike for winter riding. So one thing that's good for that is to get yourself some chain lube. So we recommend a wet lube for winter. It's more ready for wet weather since there's snow and ice and rain sometimes in winter because it's not as cold. Another thing that's really useful is winter tires. So just like car tires, bikes can have winter tires as well. We'll just have little studs on them, so that'll help you get traction on ice and snow, keep from slipping. And then another really important thing to remember is that we are riding outside, so our clothing is super important. So we always recommend And then, um... wearing layers, you know, having a couple pairs of socks, gloves are always a good idea. I have no idea. Make sure you've got maybe a balaclava on your face or a scarf or something like that. It can make it much more comfortable riding and it'll make you much more likely to want to keep cycling in the winter in the future. One thing that's important to remember in the winter is that if you were to inflate your tires indoors or maybe even in your garage and then you go outside, your tire pressure is actually going to deflate a little bit. So keep that in mind. So maybe best to pump up your tires outdoors when they're already in that climate. Um, but you may actually want to have slightly less tire pressure in the winter as opposed to in the summer. Um, it'll help increase traction on ice and snow and that kind of thing, but still keep it inflated.