To prevent frozen hubs from spoiling your fun:
Winterizing Your Freehub
Disclaimer- where I live, that isn`t necessary, so I haven`t done it myself. Sounds reasonable enough to me, though.
I ride year round- drove to work five times last year and now I`m going to try one more time for that magical 100%. For my area, we occasionally see zero F, usually a few snow storms per year in the 6 to 8 inches range (hardly any this year), feet of snow maybe once per decade, pretty bad winds in the summer, not usually too windy in the winter, generally very low humidity. So much for weather stats- my commute is only 3.2 miles each way with very little traffic. If it were longer, I`d drive when things got nasty, but for 13 to 20 minutes (depending on me as well as on the conditions), I can manage just about anything. The toughest for me is when we get deep snow to plow through or when rutted slush gets the quick freeze treatment. The most unpleasant IMHO is riding in the rain. Good thing it doesn`t often rain around here. Then again, if it did rain a lot, I`d probably have some kind of rain gear.
Angmaar, I agree that some times the equipment needed to make bicycling in bad weather pleasant costs more than it saves. I just get a thrill out of utility biking, and from trying out new bike stuff, so even if it costs me more than I save (and it does), I keep at it. If I didn`t like it, I`d be driving. Also, if you REALLY want to save money at it, google will find you home brew methods for chains or studs and you can bundle yourself up pretty well with more or less the same clothes you use to shovel your driveway. Or you can just drive when the weather is nasty and nobody will think any worse of you for it
