Behold! I Am The Human Icicle!!!

It started with yesterday's forecast. Just like that. Nothing complicated. Snow. I got super excited at the thought of riding through, and with all of the gently falling snowflakes on the way home from work. So I strapped my non-working fenders to my bag and pedaled into work in a chilly haze. I never thought that I'd be stopped in traffic while commuting by bicycle. But I was. There was a huge flatbed trailer delivering steel girders to a job site. It wound up blocking both lanes of traffic while they tried to maneuver the beast to its drop off destination. There was no way that I was going to sneak past this truck and risk getting squashed. So I waited patiently....and waited.....waited. I observed an irrate motorist almost mow down several of the construction workers who were handling traffic just because where ever he had to be was way more important than the safety of others around him. Nice. They unsuccessfully backed the trailer into the construction area twice, and I saw my opening as they schlepped around trying to position everything for the third go. I sprinted up to the sidewalk, passed the trailer, and headed into work.

Now the forecast called for snow. Approx two inches. Then it was supposed to change over to freezing rain and sleet around midnight. 'SUPPOSED'. It wound up doing this earlier, of course. So I got the rear fender to work with a bit of zip-tie ingenuity and got the front to work with some creative thinking and a dremel tool. Everyone who found out that I was riding said the same thing 'You're riding your bike?! Home? In that! [the bad weather]' Haasenstuffins had the best response. 'Lolli, you're a madman.' My lady almost begged me to catch a ride home with someone. At that point I reconsidered for a second.

So I start my ride home. It's not too bad to begin with. It's only a seven mile ride one way. Pretty short. But there are a few good sized hills on the way. They were the things that I was most concerned about. I was only running slicks. I found only one place online that carries 27" tires with knobs and haven't had a chance to order yet. I went easy and took my time to keep from washing out all over the place. Found it eaiser to stay waaay inside the shoulder where there were no tire tracks. I found that any tracks that had been made wound up freezing after a period of time and were difficult to navigate. The only other thing that made the ride difficult was that the rain kept freezing on my glasses making things difficult to see. I pocketed them eventually and sight was returned. I found myself riding on sidewalks at certain points so I could relax and not have to worry about cars passing too close to me. And that brings me to my last point.

Autos. They suck in general but suck even more when there's any kind of precipitation. People freak the fuck out and do stupid shit anytime there's water on the ground in any state. I have a theory that as precipitation increases, people's IQ decreases proportionally. I have no idea why there were so many cars out tonight. I never see that many around on any other Monday night commute. Especially taking the poor weather into account. I was worried that people were going to do dumb stuff to put me in danger and that kept me from completely relaxing. But I made it home alright. Stayed dry, warm, etc. I'm just not sure that I would want to commute in the same situation again. The slick tires made it a definite exercise in bike handling. I feel like I'm a bit of a better rider than I was before, because I know how to ride around in the stuff now but knobbies would have been preferable. The amount of cars that were out bothered me as well. If there were less, it would have been a much better experience.
What I've learned: Slush is actually better to ride through, waterproof socks and NikWax'ing my shoes the night before make a HUGE difference, weathermen lie (I'll be using my magic eight ball to forecast my weather needs for the future). The highlight of the commute?....finally acknowledging my body's requests for hydration, going to take a swig from my bottle only to find that the spout had frozen in the cold.