The key to riding a bicycle in winter, Yvonne Bambrick confides, is tissues.
"Some people do the, what do they call it, snot rockets. Yuck." She digs into her purse in the front basket of her bicycle to reveal a pale blue silk pouch, brimming with Kleenex. "Do you want one?"
We blow our noses, then shuffle our bikes onto the snowy-icy margin of an Annex street. Bambrick is the face of cycling in the city, Toronto's lone paid lobbyist for bikers. And she is teaching me how to ride with confidence in winter.