THE WINTER’S
TALE
S
TOP MEif I’ve told you the
story of my Canadian mate who
used to ride to work every day,
even in winter. He had an old magneto
Sportster, and – vitally – a heated
garage both at home and at work.
The daytime temperature in Calgary
in winter is so low that they measure
it in degrees Kelvin, not Fahrenheit.
But he managed, by wrapping up
really warm using the layer method,
which in his case probably included
tarpaulins and entire sheep.
“The snowploughs (actually, he said
‘snowplows’) used to pile the snow
up twenty, thirty feet high at the side
of the road,” he told me. “I’d just
ride through these white canyons.
There was never any ice on the road,
it was too cold for that.” It took me
a while to work that one out, but
it does make sense if it’s so cold
that the snow doesn’t ever melt and
become ice when it re-freezes.
I’ve ridden through snow and even
over ice myself, although it was never as
cold as Calgary. When we were working
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and I decided that we’d take off over
Easter and visit my rellies in northern
Germany. The ride down to the
ferry went well, as did the run
to Hamburg, where we stayed a
couple of days with my aunt.
It was on the way down
to Luneburg and on to
Brunswick that things
began to go wrong.
We had both had
two-piece leathers
made to order by
Lewis Leathers
in the East End,
and despite the fact
that Mrs Bear had to lie
down and pull up the
zip on the trousers with
a coathanger – Mr Lewis
thought that tight pants looked good on
what he called “the ladies”, and he was
of course right – these were seriously
good riding suits. But when it started
to snow we both noticed that they were
not particularly warm. Riding through
the snow in a one-horse open sleigh
may be fun if you’re covered in blankets.
I’ve never tried it. I can tell you, though,
that the same activity on an unfaired
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lined leathers over your underwear is
somewhat less of a ho ho ho occasion.
More brr brrr brr. And no, we hadn’t
taken wet weather suits because we
had intended to buy them in Germany.
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B3 between Hamburg and Brunswick
were then, and I suspect still are,
remarkably free of motorcycle shops.
Their 200km length is known for
its scenic beauty, but we were not
looking at the landscape, which was
turning a monotonous white anyway.
Of course we eventually arrived and
were reanimated with hot
showers and equally
hot toddies or I
wouldn’t be writing
this, but it was one of
only a few occasions
when I seriously thought
I might die.
You will have
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that neither of us
died. And if truth
be known, I have
memories of many
more enjoyable
excursions in the
snow. Come and take
another Easter ride
with Mrs Bear and
me. This one was in
southern Greece. We
had been down tom
Kalamata and weremaking our way back north to take a
look at Olympia. We were enjoying
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it – you guessed – started to snow.
But this time we were prepared.
A quick stop to don our Britax
(they mostly make child seats these
days) winter overalls and swap
gloves to the long-sleeved insulated
gauntlets, and we were good.
Especially since I had heated grips
and Mrs Bear had heated gloves.
Or how about the ride across the
Snowy Mountains Highway from
Tumut to Cooma, on a smooth gray
ribbon of cleared road between
snowbanks and dark, skeletal-looking
trees. The three of us had gradually
become convinced that there was no
ice on the road, and we were pushing
the envelope quite enthusiastically. I
was trailing the other pair by a couple
of hundred metres – I never was
the fastest rider – which turned out
to be a very good thing indeed. You
see, where water had been seeping
over the road, now that we were on
the southern and therefore sunless
side of the hills, there was ice. Not
a lot, but enough to put both my
mates into a snowbank. Fortunately
it was a high, deep one without
boulders or tree stumps inside its
white mantle. Both my mates and
their bikes were solidly stuck in
the sticky snow. They looked as if
they were parked in some kind of
weird horizontal fashion. For your
information, it is really hard work
to extract a bike from deep inside
a snowbank. My mates got out
by themselves; I was laughing too
hard to help them, anyway.
They got me back later that night
with an armful of snow in my bed.
I’ve got a ride planned across there
this winter. I’m counting on the
absence of ice. And mates. DBEARFACED