When Do You Start Riding?

[wessie]

I've only ridden for leisure since 2011 as my work needs a car nowadays. However, since giving up commuting I have still managed to ride in every month. For the last few years I have managed a ride on Xmas day, a tradition I started when my mother went into a care home so I rode the bike to visit her. She died in early 2013 but I still took a ride on the last two Xmas days in her memory.

[mcycleguy45]

So. For years I was living on Vancouver Island and could ride year round. However, I now live in the Cranbrook area and will probably start riding this weekend, March 27, the day I plan on picking up the new FJ. We have been lucky, no snow left and it has been raining last several days and Street sweepers have also been out. It will still be a CAREFUL ride.

[jimf]

I ordinarily ride all year round except if there's snow on the ground, although I've been less likely to do it when the roads are heavily salted in recent years.
 
This year, though, the snow in the northeast US was crazy. It's only been in the last week that there wasn't ice and snow on many of the minor roads, and with temperatures fluctuating over and under freezing it's still dangerous to ride to work -- it may be fine when I go in in the morning but melting snow can be frozen into sheets across the road by the time I go home. It's not usually this bad, but there's a lot of snow to melt.
 
I had hoped to take the bike out towards the end of this week when the temperatures are supposed to hit 60+F but it's forecast to rain a lot both of the days it's supposed to be warm. Mostly I am ok with riding in the rain and might ride anyway but I don't really want my first ride of the year to be soaking wet -- rusty skills, sand and rain all at once seems like a recipe to reduce the resale value on the Daytona before I can sell it off to help pay for the FJ.
 
I'll probably commute at least one day next week though. I need it BAD. Maybe ride the bike out to the dealer I'm looking to buy the FJ from so perhaps I can get a trade-in quote.

[louie]

We are pretty lucky living on the west coast. I appreciate the weather here even more since I am a Toronto transplant.  I picked up my FJ on March 6 and have been riding every day.  I was also riding my DRZ throughout the winter here as we had no days that dipped below zero.  
 
If I didn't live in this climate I probably wouldn't ride until the weather got up above zero consistently, nothing worse that hitting a frosty patch with a brand new bike.  

[Guest bmidd]

In Chattanooga we pretty much ride year round if there is no snow on the ground. I usually average 15-17k miles/year just riding on the weekends. I'm an electrician, so the whole commuting on a bike never works for me.

[jimf]

If I didn't live in this climate I probably wouldn't ride until the weather got up above zero consistently, nothing worse that hitting a frosty patch with a brand new bike.  

Last year when one of my friends picked up a new R1200GS and was itching to ride three of us went out in late February on a reasonably warm day (circa 45F IIRC).  Another friend was riding an older F650GS, and I had the ever-good-for-winter-riding Daytona 675 (the underseat muffler means your ass stays warm, too bad the lack of wind protection means the rest of you freezes).  The main roads had been completely clear for a couple of weeks, albeit still with some sand and salt on the inside of corners, so we figured it would be a nice ride as long as we were careful around the sandy corners. 
The plan was to ride up to a really good breakfast joint and then spend the rest of the day riding around in the backroads of southern New Hampshire and northern Massachusetts.  It started out well, with the lot of us breaking a little rust off as we meandered up towards the restaurant, gabbing away on Senas.
 
The road up to the joint, a twisty narrow two-laner through the woods with a bit of elevation gain that is normally very pleasant, turned out to have some ice flows across it.  Luckily they were short and well sanded so no one had any trouble with them, although they did make the F650 rider nervous as he's still a fairly new rider.  In short order we got to the restaurant and the R1200GS pulled into the lot first, and I followed on the Daytona.
 
Just as I realized that the lot I was riding on was both completely and bizarrely empty and a GIANT UNBROKEN SHEET OF ICE the lead guy calmly piped up, "uh, guys, we're riding on ice."  Luckily the third guy hadn't yet turned in, and he had time to stop.  Also luckily there was enough grit on the lot to stay upright if you were careful but there wasn't a lot of extra traction laying around for the taking, if you catch my meaning.  We pussy-footed it back out onto the road to assess the situation.
 
It turned out that the restaurant is closed for a few weeks of the year and we just happened to be there during that time frame.  Bummer, since we were all pretty hungry by this time.  So we laughed at our lack of planning and the narrowly avoided trauma of the icy parking area and road and headed back down to find somewhere else to eat.
 
So that road up with a few no-problem areas of ice?  Well, it turned out that in the downhill direction the lane was shaded, meaning that there were plenty of extended icy sections all the way back down to the main road, and with a bit of opposing traffic we couldn't always jump into the clear lane to the left.  Mostly it had enough grit in the ice to be ok but there were a few stretches of "yea, ok, this is not that much fun."
 
That was a little bit of a lesson.  I will commute in the dead of winter if the main roads are clean (that's what electrics are for!), and for the most part even the minor roads near where I live and work will be in decent shape if the main roads are.  Even in cases where the minor roads are troublesome it's only a short slow ride on level ground to the main road.  I've done commutes where the ride started out with a quarter mile of foot-outrigger riding through a few inches of snow -- sketchy, but not a big deal when you know you'll be on dry pavement soon.
 
The problem comes up when you're zooming around on unfamiliar roads.  You may turn off a major road that's in great shape and find that that pleasant road through the woods that you ride all the time in the warm months is littered with ice traps for the unsuspecting motorcyclist.  Even if the roadway seems clear in one direction, it might not be in the other, and you might not have the ability to choose which side to ride on.
 
Mind you, I had a great time on that ride and the icy stuff is a laugh now, since we all got through it without any kind of spill, and I would do it again in a heartbeat, but it did teach me to be much more careful in winter on roads I don't know.  You just have no idea what might be around the next corner.
 
So be careful out there, but have fun too.

[steve]

A tad off topic, but some riding with snow all around, was on my previous bike a Thundercat / YZF600R, this was in the Dolomites, Northern Italy, slippery moment towards the end a bit of ice.
 
[video src=https://youtu.be/AzBXbvc3oGM]
 

[wessie]

I love the Dolomites - prefer to go a couple of weeks later, as I said in the other thread to @cruizin as you can almost guarantee the snow has melted once into the 3rd week of June

[deersSlayer]

I love the Dolomites - prefer to go a couple of weeks later, as I said in the other thread to @cruizin as you can almost guarantee the snow has melted once into the 3rd week of June

In 1999 we did Stelvio mid June, temperature was about +3 C. A week later when we were back in the Netherlands for the Dutch TT (MotoGP), Stelvio got 10 - 15 cm of new snow. 
Good trip, also included WSB at Nürburgring! I was riding a friend's 1980 Honda CBX. 
 
 

[jimf]

A tad off topic, but some riding with snow all around, was on my previous bike a Thundercat / YZF600R, this was in the Dolomites, Northern Italy, slippery moment towards the end a bit of ice.

OK, if I might say so, that is a gorgeous road (I would stand a chance of riding right off the road while looking at the mountains!) and some of those sections in the shade looked terrifyingly slippery.
 
 

[papifun]

Hopefully in another two weeks . Still a lot of road salt and gravel on pavement which makes turning very dangerous..snow is finally beginning to melt.

[smurph]

We usually start riding here in Edmonton as soon as the temps are consistently + 4C during the day time. I'm the only one on my street who is using an ice scraper all February clearing a 8" path for the bike to get down the alley. I got some odd looks from the neighbours but now they all know what's up. I've never worried too much about gravel as street sweepers don't seem to get around here until almost June. There's always a few patches that have gravel on them year round. Just have to be careful.

[b12ty]

About 6:30am, all year.
 
Ty

[iamthedruman]

Typically in Ottawa, I'll pull out the VFR starting in late March. This is inconsistent as snow can always show late. I've been pretty regular about getting out from April all the way to end of October/early November.
 
Been riding since 07. Started on a SV650S and moved to the VFR 2 years later. Can't wait for this teacher stuff to get settled so I have a paycheque with which to buy the FJ!