My bike parked at Warde Hall, this morning, Dec. 7, Pearl Harbor Day. Yes, those are my tire tracks. Most of the pavement on the ride today was bare, my driveway and the end of the ride were really the only snowy spots. And, no, that's not my cigarette butt.I’m not sure it was a good idea to ride my bike Tuesday. In fact, given a similar day in the future I intend to not ride my bike.
I awoke Tuesday to find a nasty surprise—snow. Not that snow is a shock in Iowa in December, just that there hadn’t been much chance of it in the weather forecast—it was supposed to be cloudy and cold, but dry. It was not dry. Once again, I found myself biking in the snow.
And biking some more. I had a dentist appointment that afternoon, and biked to and from it, while it was snowing. The snow was light—it wasn’t the wet, stingy flakes from the previous alleged flurries, but the snow melted and then refroze on the pavement. The C Avenue and Blair’s Ferry crossing in the morning was the most treacherous part of my ride, because car traffic had compacted the snow into a white, slick glaze.
But the ride home, after bell practice, in the dark as it was increasingly freezing was a bit dicey.
Well, made it with no slips, but I don’t want to try that again. When things go wrong on ice on a bike, they go instantly and very and possibly bone-breakingly wrong. Audrey was babysitting and had to leave campus long before I did, although in retrospect, maybe I would just hang out at work until she could come get me. It certainly would have been safer.
Wednesday, at least, it was dry. It was also much colder, but I’ll take dry and cold over melting, freezing snow falling any day. I had to fully bundle up, including long underwear, two pairs of socks, a turtleneck under a warm sweater, a scarf over my light biking jacket, yet I wasn’t really uncomfortable.
All in all, it was better biking weather today.
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