The Cold War

This entry is part 7 of 26 in the series Adventure Rider Issue #4

There’s another winter on its way. It’s time to prepare for some low temperatures and wet weekends. Here’s a few tips on keeping your riding enjoyable when the cold hits.

It can be tough to enjoy a ride when conditions aren’t ideal. As the southern hemisphere moves into the middle of the year, it can be ball-shrinkingly uncomfortable to head out for a few days of honest riding. There’s nothing like low temperatures to take the gloss off what might otherwise be a great ride.

But knowing those chilly days are coming gives you a chance to be ready, and preparation is the key to enjoying winter riding. Let’s cover a few important basics first.

Seriously

While we can all get a laugh out of shared discomfort, it’s important to be able to spot the early signs of bastard hypothermia.

Leaving all the technical gibber aside, hypothermia is when a person’s body temperature drops to where normal body functions are affected. Every rider has experienced hypothermia at some stage. Shivering is an early warning sign, but it’s also a normal function of a body trying to stay warm. You should look for violent shivering to the point of muscles being difficult to coordinate and the skin becoming pale and cold to touch. That’s not a serious situation that needs medical attention, but it’s a warning that the subject needs to do something or they could end up in need of help. Also, the coordination problems can be a worry for someone riding (although it’d be hard to tell any difference with the way the AdvRider Mag staffers ride normally).

Of course there’s a lot more to hypothermia than a bit of a shiver, but that’s what we should all be looking out for, and when spotted, we should be looking to correct. Usually pulling up at a warm café or campfire will get things back on track.

The worse the hypothermia, the more concerted the measures that may need to be taken. In general, a warm drink, warm food, and a little time in shelter so the body can restore its own safe working temperature will be enough. Contrary to popular belief, alcohol isn’t a help in cases of hypothermia. A stiff brandy will actually cause blood vessels to dilate near the skin and allow even more heat loss.

Warm ride

Now the fun part. What can we do to avoid hypothermia in the first place?

Got your credit card ready? There’s heaps! A smart rider can cruise along in sub-zero temperatures and hardly feel a thing these days.

We’ll start with the bike.

There’s always someone flapping on about ‘wind-chill’. It’s defined as “the perceived decrease in air temperature felt by the body on exposed skin due to the flow of air”. What it means is, if the air temperature might be, say, seven degrees, the moving air will make the temperature on a person’s skin much lower. It’s the phenomenon we all use to our advantage when we run a fan in the summer to cool us down. The air is the same temperature, but the fact it’s moving over us helps us feel cooler – thanks to tricky evaporation and heat transfer an’ that.

Because we’re on bikes thrumming along, the air is always moving over us, fast, so we always feel it’s much colder. If the air temperature is low, the moving air can be a real mongrel. Wind chill is for reals.

If we can reduce the amount or speed of the air moving over, or in contact with, our skin, it will reduce the wind chill factor.

The first and obvious thought that comes to mind is a fairing or screen, and it’s probably the biggest single mod that can be done to a bike to ease the rider’s exposure to the cold. That’s why so many adventure bikes have either screens, bulbous front ends – very few have actual fairings – or both. These designs are intended to keep a great deal of moving air off the rider and dramatically increase his or her comfort level.

Keeping the wind off exposed skin is the aim. Note the plastic rain jacket on the rider in the background. They have some drawbacks, but can make the difference between surviving and DNFing a tough outing.

We’ve seen some ingenious improvisations when things have become seriously cold. If you find yourself in a tough, challenging, cold situation, bend your mind to how you can protect yourself from the wind. It’ll be the single thing you do that will give the biggest and fastest relief. A tank bag piled high in front of a rider’s chest will help. Strapping something to the ’bars can cut the windblast considerably, and even fashioning temporary handguards out of cardboard or anything available can make a huge difference. Really serious hand protection can be in the form of muffs. Prices and quality vary, and it’s important to ensure the muffs you buy allow your levers and controls the clearance they need.

If you know there’s a cold ride coming up, all these things can be bought as sexy, high-quality add-ons. Some of them are not only incredibly effective, but make you look awesomely rugged and tough as well.

Power play

For those really looking for a luxurious package, there’s a range of heated equipment available that’ll run off a bike’s battery. Heated grips are very common, but there are heated seats and we’ve even seen a bike with an actual heater that could direct hot air gathered from around the headers up at the rider.

Aside from parts of the bike itself being warm, there’s apparel that will draw power from the battery to provide a very warm, snuggly cocoon for a chilly adventurer. Heated gloves and undershirts are common.

These are all good options, but make sure you have someone who knows what they’re doing assess the current draw and your bike’s ability to provide that current before you get too carried away. Push-starting a 200kg bike with a flat battery will get you warm fast, but you won’t enjoy the experience.

Vested interest

With your bike set up it’s time to look at apparel, and there’s heaps to look at. Unfortunately, models for this type of clothing tend to be hefty, bearded types, or remarkably metrosexual looking males, but we’ll look anyway.

Everyone’s favourite mantra with apparel for the cold is, “Layers!”

The whole idea goes back to stopping the movement of air.

Layers of clothing trap air, both in the fabric and between the different layers themselves. Once the air is still,actually a good insulator. And once it’s still, our bodies can warm up the still air and create even more effective insulation.

Where technology leaps to the fore is with the types of fabrics now available. Things like Gore-tex and some of the synthetics are incredible for their ability to block liquid water, but to still allow the flow of gasses. The idea there is that it’ll keep the rain out, but it’ll allow heated air to move very slowly. That’s great in summer, but in winter it sounds less ideal. Actually it works well in the cold as well, because it only allows the tiniest amount of airflow, and that stops liquids being trapped inside the fabric.

Let’s have a look at how to plan some layering.

The sheep’s back

Back in the day, when cables stretched and made brakes less efficient and waxed cotton was the high-tech choice for making weatherproof apparel, a newspaper stuffed down the front of the T-shirt and a pair of welding gloves were the gun solutions to riding in the cold. These days, drum brakes still suck, but there’s a lot better alternatives to the gauntlets and ’paper.

Starting with the layer closest to the skin – the base layer – generally, some sort of fibrous fabric will work best as an insulator. The texture allows for a lot of air to be caught and held, and that lets the body warm it up and keep it warm. Fibrous fabrics tend to be a little bulky though, and that’s not ideal for riders.

There are some good synthetic fabrics, and most riders will have seen various ‘thermals’ in use. A great many of these are thermals designed for general use, and they’re mostly a good start.

There’s a school of thought that backs a natural fibre over any synthetic, and the fibre of choice is good ol’ Merino wool.

The Kiwis have been onto this for years, but it’s only relatively recently that adventure riders have woken up to it.

There’s a lot of claims being made about Merino wool being superior to other wools, how Merino wool garments don’t stink no matter how long you wear them, and how Kiwis find sheep in the long grass.

We actually thought a Merino was where you parked a boat-o, so we thought we should find out a little more.

Fair dinkum

Andy Strapz is a very fussy bloke when it comes to making and developing products, and he uses Aussie Merino for his purpose-built rider thermals. Aussie Merino is obviously better than the NZ stuff, and we asked Andy why it was his choice of fabric.

“Merino is streets ahead of the synthetic alternatives,” he said, not spinning us a yarn.

“Aside from the environmental considerations of Merino wool being a biodegradable and renewable resource, it retains its heat when it’s wet, and it feels much nicer against the skin. It’s also lighter for its ability to insulate.”

We tried to look all knowledgeable and informed, but you can’t fool Andy.

“You can get better insulation from Merino wool than you can from a similar weight of comparable synthetics,” he explained patiently.

“There’s different grades of Merino wool, though, and you wouldn’t use the same wool in a sock as you’d use in an undergarment, for example. For the Andy Strapz thermals we use only superfine Merino. Whatever garment you’re looking at, make sure you check the details on the manufacturer’s label.”

“Superfine” in woolclassing terminology is less than 17 micron – about one-fifth the width of a human hair.

That sounded like very good advice to us, and, snickering about ‘undergarments’, we moved on.

Layer bout

After the base layer things get less important because the fabric’s not up against your skin. Here a few general points to consider when planning an icy-weather ensemble:

• Many thin layers is more effective than less thick, heavy layers

• Extremities are important. Feet and hands are furthest from the body’s core, therefore are hardest to keep warm and quickest to drop temperature. Good quality socks, boots, gloves, and helmet liners can make a huge difference to the body’s ability to cope with cold

• Layers on your legs are important, too. A lot of riders cover their upper torso well, but leave their legs with just socks and pants. Whatever you do for the top, do for the bottom

• Staying dry is hugely important for comfort and for fighting cold. Look for waterproof outer garments where possible. Boots and gloves included

Heads up

Helmets with visors, as opposed to motocross helmets that need goggles, have made a huge difference to rider comfort in the cold and rain. There’s no longer any need to tolerate a freezing windblast on the cheeks, or even more uncomfortable, the driving sting of raindrops that feels like an angry farmer with a 410 shottie unloading on your boat race.

Once again, the still air inside a dualsport helmet is a great barrier to the cold and discomfort of a freezing ride. If your regular helmet is a motocrosser, and you know it’s going to be cold, you’d be better off changing to a visored helmet, even if it’s a road helmet. The motocrosser is designed for maximum ventilation and the peak is to shield your eyes from the sun. On a cold trip, maximum ventilation sucks, and you’re not likely to have a lot of problems with direct sunlight.

A lot of riders also use a balaclava or thin headscarf of some kind under the helmet. It’s a layer, so it’s good, and it can really make things snug.

The exposed neck is often overlooked when searching for comfort in the cold, but we’re firm believers in a good neck protector. It can be used to straight-out protect the bare throat from wind, but it can be also used as a bandana, a dust mask, a head wrap, a bandage or even to polish a mirror. They’re very handy.

Outer limits

Last of all comes the outer layer of apparel, and here’s where most of us hit the big expense.Gore-tex is the hot poop in waterproof fabric for bike clobber at the moment. ‘Gore-tex’ is actually a brand name for expanded polytetrafluoroethylene – that’s why we all just call it Gore-tex – and it tends to be as expensive as buggery.

It might seem expensive, but it works, and when you’re on a really cold, wet, shithouse ride, fighting to just make it to the next stop, Gore-tex can suddenly seem like a great investment.

There are different grades of Gore-tex for different applications, but what makes it so good is that it keeps rain out, but still ‘breathes’, so a Gore-tex suit doesn’t feel like being in a garbage bag with the top tied tight. Gore tex isn’t the only good product for cold and wet-weather protection, but it’s good stuff.

One of the best outfits around comes from Touratech.

We asked Robin Box what made it such a great outfit.

“The biggest thing is that the Gore-tex is laminated to the outer layer of cordura,” explained Robin, having ridden in some very extreme conditions overseas.

“The cordura is the abrasion-resistant layer, and the Gore-tex is the cold and water-resistant layer. If the two aren’t bonded, the outer layer can absorb water, then the wind flowing around the apparel will chill everything down. That’s why liners tend to leave riders feeling the cold so badly. The outer layer of fabric can still get wet and the wind drops the temperature. That doesn’t happen with the Companero suit because the outer layer won’t absorb any water.”

Wet and forget

A less-expensive alternative to a Gore-tex suit is a straight out rain- or wet-weather suit. These range in quality and price from things like a good ol’ ‘raincoat’ that flaps around and tears to pieces in a few kilometres, through to some very advanced and well-designed apparel.

The problem with cheap, out-and-out plastic is that it’s uncomfortable to wear and it doesn’t breathe. So when a rider’s body begins to warm up, it perspires. Even a tiny little trace of moisture caught inside a plastic outfit stays there. Believe it or not, the body needs some level of air movement to stay comfortable, and plastic prevents that. It leads to another common circumstance: if a rider waits until the first drops of rain hit, then fits a liner or rain suit, plastic means that water is trapped there, and that’s hopelessly uncomfortable.

The better-quality plastic rain suits and jackets with sneaky venting can be very effective if they’re in place before a rider gets wet, and of course, they’ll offer a huge reduction in wind chill, and that means a warmer outlook.

And if things are really tough, being a tad clammy inside a plastic suit might be a whole lot better than the freezing alternative.

And, as Andy Strapz pointed out, if you do get caught out badly, the ol’ newspaper-stuffed-down-the-front-of-the shirt does actually work.

Tiresome

Cold is a sneaky bugger, and there’s nothing like it for ruining a ride. Not only can it be downright uncomfortable – even painful – but it’ll contribute enormously to fatigue, and that ups the chances of a fall in a big way. The ideal is to stop yourself getting cold in the first place, and especially avoid getting wet. Controlling air movement across the skin is a huge factor in controlling the worst aspects of hypothermia.

There now. Get started on all that and get out there this winter!

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