Water Bottles: 3% Lithium Solution Edition

Are you all jacked up in the head? Me too, apparently.

Personality Disorder Test Results Paranoid |||||||||||||| 58% Schizoid |||||||||||||| 58% Schizotypal |||||||||||| 50% Antisocial |||||||||||||||||| 74% Borderline |||||||||||||||| 62% Histrionic |||||||||||||| 54% Narcissistic |||||||||||||| 58% Avoidant |||||||||||||| 54% Dependent |||| 18% Obsessive-Compulsive |||||||||| 38%

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Take the test and see how you stack up to me.

After that you can sit in the corner in a fetal position and rock yourself to sleep, muttering about how your mother didn't love you enough.

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I don't know about you, but it helps me to figure out well ahead of time what clothes to wear in any given weather. I hate to be sitting there prior to the morning commute/training session, trying to figure out what to wear. The existential struggles between long sleeve base layer or arm warmer, tights or knee covering, headband or skully seem as epic at 5:30 AM as other classic struggles such as cats versus dogs, good versus evil, shit or go blind.

The Table of Suffering

At or Below	Then Add
70	Knee warmers
60	Short sleeve base layer
55	Long sleeve base layer (ditch the shorty)
50	Add long sleeve jersey. MTB gloves with fingers; ditch short sleeve jersey (duh) or add arm warmers.
45	Add wind vest, headband
40	Carry arm warmers, wear wicking skullcap. Toesies. Ditch the headband. Consider polypro glove liner.
35	Ditch the long sleeve base, substitute long sleeve polypro or wool long sleeve base layer; bib tights in lieu of shorts+knee warmer. Put on real winter gloves.
30	Full tights under shorts – wool or polypro; polypro skullcap, keep knee or leg warmers. Poly booties.
25	Wool or poly tights, under bib tights. Depending on wind, synthetic or poly base layer, wool jersey. If synthetic jersey, then thermal vest. Arm warmers. Wool socks.
20 or lower	Wool or poly tights & top base layer. Bib tights, wool jersey. Cycling windbreaker. “Chickenhead” polypro head cover. Winter gloves, with ‘running glove” liners. God bless if you're riding on the road in this weather; this is MTB only for me.
	***If windy, then subtract 5 degrees. If dewpoint is within 5 degrees of temp and temp is under 60, subtract 5 degrees. (E.g. 50 degrees with 10 MPH wind (-5) and 48 degree dewpoint (-5) feels about like 40.

I'll probably print that up and tape it to my gear closet door tonight. The key to being warm enough is to start out a little too cold and as soon as you start feeling comfortable start unzipping stuff and removing transitional clothing. If it's under 45-50 degrees, if you let yourself get sweaty, you're in for trouble, the degree of severity is determined by the temp & wind. You don't want to be going hypothermic and then get hit with a flat tire.

Caveat: I'm well insulated. You may need to adjust your layering up or down 5-7 degrees. So instead of putting on a long sleeve base layer at 55, maybe you do it at 60. What works, I think, is the idea of a logical progression, from one set of layering to the next. Some things I immediately regret putting on if it's too warm, like the polypro base layer. That throws me into a sweat/freeze cycle.

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Just a reminder: Tacchino Cross, Leesburg, November 23. There will be a guy in a turkey suit.