Tundra_Man 

Consecutive bicycle work commute number 1112:

What a weird January. The last three days had lows in the 20s and highs in the 30s, which is a good 20-30 degrees above normal for us. I rode my hybrid rather than one of the winter bikes.

This morning I woke up to 34°F. It had rained a fair amount during the night, but now snow was falling on top of the wet. It's supposed to snow up to about 4" through tomorrow and we're under a blizzard warning, so I opted to take the fat bike today. The hybrid would have been fine on the way to work, but at 5 PM tonight who knows what the weather will be like?

4" of snow isn't that much, so the main reason for the blizzard warning is due to the winds which can turn even a little bit of snow into a whiteout. On the way in I had 20+ mph sustained with gusts on top of that. It was a mix of headwind/crosswind. They're predicting sustained winds of 30+ mph with gusts over 50 mph for the ride home, but areas west of us have already seen gusts over 70 mph so it might be an adventure getting home.

A co-worker who rides his bike 9 months out of the year pulled up behind me in his car as I was riding into the cul-de-sac where our office sits. I was going straight into the wind at that moment, and my speed dropped low enough that my speedometer wouldn't register that I was moving (it cuts off below 3 mph). When we got to the parking lot he empathized with me. My fat bike is slow on a calm day, but it's nearly an immobile object in a headwind.

As I was trying to take my temperature before entering the building I dropped my helmet again and snapped off the zip ties that keep my backup headlamp attached. That's the second time I've done that in two weeks. With no backup available, I went back out to the bike and grabbed my headlight so I could get a full charge on it before I head home tonight.