a good place to start is your local bike shop. there you’ll meet ppoele interested in biking. if you’re lucky like i was the ppoele working there were racers and knew the local club and helped get me started. if not, search for a club in your area. clubs usually have club races, training rides and the like.i wasted a lot of money buying up the ladder. the problem with starting with a low line bike is that as you get serious, you need to get a better bike. that basicly wastes the first bike. in my opinion get the best bike you can afford starting off. you can save money by going aluminum frame. as for the components i would say with shimano anything 105 or above is great, with campy, anything they have is good. you should be able to find something very competitive.

I had NO idea road bikes were more stable! Thanks for that input.

Perhaps those people rode mountain bikes, as I did my first two winters of riding? I wiped out all the time, almost fracturing my collarbone once. But several people suggested I try road bikes instead. I didn’t really understand why until I tried. Two years on a road bike now, in harsher conditions than I let myself ride in before, and I have never even come close to wiping out.
I think a common mistake people make when venturing out on icy roads is they think that your typical mountain bike with big knobby tires and wide set handlebars offers more stability than a road bike with its typically thinner tires and more narrowly set handlebars, when in fact, counter-intuitively, the road bike is the way to go. And it’s not because of the width of the tires as such, but because the steering mechanism (a narrower hand position; and fork angle, in play with steering angle and size of wheels, all affect what is called the “trail”). All these same parts on the mountain bike conspire to make it very responsive to relatively slight changes in steering, which are ideal on off-road conditions, but are deadly on icy roads. The road bike, however, is constructed to stay straighter over longer distances. Its steering mechanism was made to race in long, straight lines with few sharp turns, if at all. It is relatively more work to effectively turn a road bike’s wheel sharply to the left or right.
As you would expect, a touring bike has the longest trail (the least responsiveness) and a hybrid is a compromise between a road bike and a mountain bike, and even a touring bike, which makes it an ideal multi-purpose bike for anyone who can’t or doesn’t want to store 2 or more different types of bicycles. Each of these bikes have manufacturing standard set “trails” and it’s considered unsafe to randomly change your bike’s type of handlebars or fork without consulting a professional. What seems like a simple change of parts affects trail in ways you might not predict. It can be worth exploring this with a professional to maximize your own riding needs.
So, since a fast, sudden front wheel turn on ice is the primary and most sudden and dangerous cause of wipeouts, and the bane of the winter cyclist’s existence, experimenting with different trail values can improve greatly one’s enjoyment of winter cycling regardless of the general type of bicycle.
I know a guy at work who rides a mountain bike frame, set on 2 narrow 700c wheels, a different fork than the one it originally came with, with a short, flat handlebar, and disk brakes : a Frankenbike. But it works for him.

Ryan, one question – in sub zero temperatures, aren’t you worried about slipping on ice? I know several people who gave up cycling in sub-zero temperatures after wiping out on black ice …

Alex, this looks really cool. Maybe sometime you could post more details about these alternate routes?

Oh yeah and there’s a neat reward if you ride on the back roads north of the upper levels highway… You can get at the old 1956 original Trans Canada Highway bridge across Nelson Creek… it’s long been closed to cars and is hidden away in the bush, but you can still bike across it:

http://homepage.mac.com/precosky/bike/hsbay/files/page51-1007-full.html
http://homepage.mac.com/precosky/bike/hsbay/files/page51-1006-full.html

They’ve increased service on the tunnel truck so that it’s all year now, although with less frequent service in the colder months:

http://www.th.gov.bc.ca/popular-topics/driver_info/route-info/massey/massey.htm

I’ve ridden to Horseshoe Bay by bike, but used the back roads rather than the Upper Levels Highway. Last time I went, leaving the UBC area around 8, I think I got there at 10. Marine Dr is narrow but I haven’t had any safety problems. There’s also a bike route I’ve used on the north side of the upper levels highway, but it has a really steep hill that I had to walk up.

Now that is a serious chain! I have to get myself one of those. It should be enough to put off most bike thieves.

I suppose it would fall into the “honking chains”. It’s not as big as others, however considerably larger than a cable:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v353/ryanz4/lock.jpg

I keep putting off buying a new larger lock, however this has done a great job for the past 4 or 5 years.

U-Locks can be difficult to use with bike racks like this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ryanz4/5454154776

Hey Paddyanne … I am also hoping the owner comes across it – I would love to interview him/her. I would have looked for the owner at the time, but I was in a rush to fetch one of my kids, and by the time we walked back, the bike and dog were gone …

The 2 bikes per bus is a major problem. We have contemplated using the bus to get to the ferry, but then we are put off by the thought of possibly sitting at a bus stop in the middle of nowhere for a couple of hours waiting for a bus that has BOTH bike spots available (the busses only run every 30 minutes).

I did not know about the truck.