As an inhabitant of one of the most bike-friendly countries in the world, Denmark (which happens to very much be in northern latitudes and get a lot of rain) since birth, I can categorically and without a doubt declare your claims to be absolute horseshit.
Honest question: How do you deal with extreme cold and/ or rain when biking to and from work? I’m interested to learn more.
For the cold I often leave with light gloves and a jacket but often take off the jacket halfway when you get warm of the exercise
For the rain you have plastic pants and poncho to put over your clothes.
A lot of companies also have showers so you can just wear sports clothes that dry fast and take a shower and put on decent clothes. Combining fitness and your commute.
Basically just dress for the weather. Also helps that it’s a small country so our commutes tend to be short 🤷
That said, when I was young and in shape, I used to ride my bicycle 15 kilometers (a little over 9 miles) up and down hills each way 5 days a week no matter the weather and I fucking loved it!
I live in Chicago and the number of people riding bikes, powered or not, including motorcycles for good measure, plummets in the winter. It’s not zero, but anyone using them is either desperate or (in the case of not doing or out of sheer necessity) completely nuts. I’ve lived it, don’t tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about.
Just because you live in a place where not a lot of people use bikes in the winter and the rain doesn’t mean that bikes are useless in those cases, which is what you said.
So yeah, I WILL tell you that you don’t know what you’re talking about when you make such preposterous statements.
