For all of you living in places where the cycling streets are covered in white stuff all winter, there’s light at the end of the tunnel.  Yes, my friends….Spring is on it’s way. I’m definitely a cold weather riding wimp and could never imagine riding through a cold and snowy winter, but I’ve met a lot of hardcores who do it each and every year.

Sam Haraldson (@sharalds) and his group of riding buddies from Bozeman, MT don’t let winter get in the way of their riding…and last November they launched the cycling hashtag #ridethroughwinter to help celebrate this fact.

#ridethroughwinter

LTB: When did you first send out a tweet with #ridethroughwinter?

@sharalds: The hashtag was born November 18th 2010, about the time I put the studded tires on my bicycle in prep for our beloved Montana winter.

The first tweet it appeared in was as follows:

@sharalds: Rode home from @BZNBikeKitchen with a beautiful flurry of snow falling from the sky and accumulating on the street. #ridethruwinter.

I got a few complaints from friends that disliked the word “thru” and it then morphed into #ridethroughwinter.  In fact there is a Tweet from fellow BZN cyclist @singletrackm1nd questioning this dilemna:

@SingletrackM1nd: Ok Bzn peeps I need a ruling here. Is it gonna be #ridethruwinter or #ridethroughwinter? I’m getting confused, although that’s easy to do.

My group of friends are all year-round cyclists and when the weather gets bad we tend to give each other virtual high-fives regarding riding in these conditions so a hashtag like #ridethroughwinter is the perfect way to do that.

LTB: What city are you from and what is it like to ride there through winter?

@sharalds: I reside in Bozeman, Montana where winter can start as early as October and end as late as June.  We have snow and ice on the streets for at least six months of the year and regularly get cold snaps of -20 deg F that can last up to two weeks.

LTB: How many years have you been riding through winter?

@sharalds: I started commuting year-round in ’06 or ’07 when I was living in Duluth, MN.  I consider my new home of Bozeman to be absolutely tame compared to Duluth.

LTB: Have you seen the #ridethroughwinter hashtag used a lot?  Can you remember a favorite tweet that included it?

@sharalds: I was interested to find fellow Bozeman cyclists picking up the use of the hashtag but haven’t been paying attention to whether it has spread viral at all.  Anyone that would tag a tweet with it would probably get along with me because it takes a certain someone to ride their bicycle all year round and I like that kind of person!  Just knowing that a few hard men and women are bicycle commuting to work in 25 deg F temps strengths a bond between us. If I was to suggest a favorite tweet of mine that used the hashtag I would say it was:

@sharalds: The bite of a Schwalbe Ice Spiker Pro into ice atop asphalt. #ridethruwinter

LTB: You’re almost done with #ridethroughwinter….how excited are you about #SummerRiding?

@sharalds: Bicycling-wise I’m just as excited for summer as I am for winter.  I get to ride a lot no matter what time of year it is so I’m always stoked. Come summer I’ll swap my snowboard for my mountain bike and that will be nice but here in SW Montana we try to live in the moment and keep ourselves from always looking ahead to the whatever the next season will bring. I throw another hashtag around from time to time (winter and summer) and that’s #cycle300.  I set a goal for myself this year to ride 300 days and am so far on track to do so.

Sam has a bunch of his winter cycling photos up on his Flikr account, and can be tweeted at @sharalds. Thanks for sharing your #ridethroughwinter story with us.

Photo c/o Sam Haraldson