Even before our changing climate made summer riding intolerable and sometimes just plain dangerous, I’ve been a fan of riding bikes in the fall. Yes, I struggle with the lack of daylight in the evenings, but I love the fall colours, the fresh feel in the air, and the cooler temperatures.
If you’ve been thinking about buying a bike or starting a regular bike commute, do it now. Don’t wait until spring. Fall is better.
It used to be that my preference for fall riding was primarily a comfort preference. Nobody wants to ride up hills in 35-degree heat with bonus humidity if they don’t have to. But that’s not what summer riding looks like anymore. It’s not just hot. Now, at least here in Ontario, we have heat warnings that stretch on for days, air quality alerts that turn a ride into a genuine respiratory risk, and those strange orange-grey scary skies that mean somewhere, hundreds of kilometres away, forests are burning. I used to plan summer rides around traffic and daylight. Now I plan them around smoke alerts and the air quality index, the way I’d check for rain.
Fall gives us that freedom back, at least for a while. The air clears and the heat breaks. It’s not just that fall is pleasant, it’s that fall is safe for riding distances in a way summer increasingly isn’t. That’s a genuinely new reason to love this season, and not one I would have thought about five or ten years ago when summers were more livable.
So here’s what I think, whether you’re four years into commuting or you haven’t bought a bike yet- don’t let the bad summer air or the very hot days talk you out of riding this autumn. You don’t need to put off your riding resolutions until spring. Fall is short but it’s a great time to ride. We’ve got clear air, rideable temps, and good light in the mornings before the time change. It’s time to get the lights and go now, while the getting’s good, instead of waiting for a spring that leads into another steamy summer we’ll need fall to recover from.
