My bicycle kit

Obviously the winter cycling season put a few requirements as far as equipment goes, both for the rider and for the bicycle.

The most obvious thing was winter tires. There are some places even in Finland where you can make do without winter tires, but in the city I live in, the bike path maintenance is not done as well as it probably could be and the fluctuations above and below zero mean that roads get pretty slippery. So I got myself a pair of Suomi Tyres Routa tires that I chucked on the bike when night temperatures started dropping below freezing. Aside from being a massive pain to get on the wheels, they worked quite well and unless I went through thicker bits of snow, I never felt like I was slipping out of control, so I felt like they were worth the money to keep riding with confidence.

Obviously the freezing temperatures and the breeze from going a bit faster can also feel pretty rough, so a few choice clothing options were also an important addition. I bought a pair of biking goggles and put on a scarf around my face, so my face wouldn't keep freezing. A regular scarf turned out to be a bit inconvenient, but my parents got me a merino wool tube scarf, which was a bit lighter and more comfortable to wear. The goggles I was a little bit more mixed on, since they fairly frequently kept fogging up and I would have to take them off to see. But when they weren't fogged up, they kept the wind off my eyes and therefore made everything quite a bit nicer.

I've also learned that it's quite easy to over-dress and when you start going, you don't actually need very thick layers. As a commuter, I don't want to be very sweaty at the end of the ride, so some balancing decisions needed to be made. For me it turned out that a fairly light jacket on top of my hoodie was enough. Most of the days I was also able to make do with my thicker gloves that have a fold-over cover for my fingers, but on the -20C days I swapped out to a pair of leather gloves.

During the autumn and spring side, when rain was the biggest concern, I cannot praise the rain poncho I got enough. It quite literally made me not have to worry about rain at all, since it keeps everything dry and is light and cool enough to not make me sweaty. I keep that thing packed in my bag almost all the time just in case and it simply makes rainy day rides almost as fun as sunny days.

I have already in the past mentioned that I use a pannier bag attached to my rack and I very much still do that. In fact, I even ordered a second pannier bag which looks a bit nicer to use as my usual commute bag while the second one is used more for grocery runs or in case I need the capacity of two bags.

Panniers are extremely good and I really do recommend having one instead of a backpack. However, I did notice that a few things were a bit tricky to carry around with them on a few occasions I ended up needing to just strap stuff to the rack directly to move it around. That's not really an issue by itself, aside from creating a bit of a worry in me whether the things would stay where they are. But especially when I needed to move some plants around, it made me think whether I should try a basket. I felt a bit mixed about it, but a shop had one for a cheap price so I took the chance on it and I am quite positively surprised. I opted for one on my rack, since I wanted to maximize the amount of carrying space and because both my rack and the basket were very generic ones, I mounted it with elastic straps that just hook to the rack. That way I could (fairly) quickly take it off to get into a shop and more importantly to take the basket with me to my apartment, since I don't want to use it permanently on my bike. It makes using panniers impossible, so I want to alternate between them.

All in all though, like I said, the basket has been a pleasure. I would argue it's more convenient for a grocery run than the panniers and I have also been able to lug around a few bigger things, such as this Ikea Moppe thing:

Aside from the basket and panniers, I still keep a frame bag attached to my bicycle with some tools and replacement parts. Basically, two extra inner tubes, bike pump, wrench to take off the wheels and a general multi-tool.

On the cockpit side, I have also made a few changes. Firstly, I replaced the stock bell with one I got from my parents that sounds a bit better. I of course already attached a phone holder some time ago to help with navigation and it has been quite nice, as I have used it on a few longer trips across town.

I did also make one safety related purchase. On one of the rides I was on not that long ago, another cyclist started passing me when I was making a turn and I only noticed quite late and was able to dodge. Now, this may have been my fault, as I probably didn't signal early enough that I was going to turn and it probably would have been good to better check my surroundings before committing to the turn. So, to address at least one of those things, I chucked a mirror on my left handlebar to get a better idea of what is going on behind me.

This is definitely getting into the slightly overkill territory and I probably could achieve the same amount of safety by just turning my head a little, but this felt like it would make it so easy to keep track of what is behind me that I would end up doing it without thinking. And I think it works for that decently well. It hasn't saved me from any collisions yet, and I hope it will never have to, but even if it's only there to make me feel better, that's good enough for me.

So, that's it for the stuff on my bicycle (and myself, when I am riding). There are certain things that I might still want to try adding to the bike at some point, such as a front dynamo so that I wouldn't have to worry about charging my lights, but I am not in any particular kind of rush to get that set up. I have gotten this bike to a state where I love taking it out for a ride and I am confident enough that just about any place I care to go with it is reachable in a reliable way. I am even still perfectly happy with the lack of gears, even the hills are becoming less and less of a problem as time goes on.

So, hope that gives you some inspiration to go and do a bit of bike riding of your own and maybe also gives some ideas how to make your rides a bit more convenient and fun for you as well. Thanks for reading!