Tundra_Man 

Consecutive bicycle work commute number 1331:

Palindrome commute number!

The last 24 hours of commuting have been interesting, to say the least.

When I left work yesterday evening, the temp was 47°F. In mid December. In South Dakota. Crazy. However, it was pouring sheets of rain. On top of that, there was thick fog. I didn't think it was possible to have that much rain fall, yet be foggy at the same time. As I rode home I watched the river, which had been frozen solid from the previous few weeks of cold weather, as the rain flowed on top of the ice. That was also a new one.

After I got home soaking wet, it rained hard for a few more hours. Then the temp quickly dropped about 30 degrees and the wind came up hard. The rain turned to snow. We were predicted to get gusts of more than 60 mph, and I'm pretty sure they were accurate.

I didn't sleep well. In the middle of the night I woke up, and my brain clicked on as I dwelt on some ongoing personal issues. As I laid awake in bed I could hear the wind howling. I started to dread the morning commute as I knew I would be riding straight into that wind. That didn't do much to help me relax and fall back to sleep. As a result, when the the alarm went off at 5:45 AM I wasn't very rested.

With all the rain we had and then the sudden temperature drop, it turned into a "flash freeze" situation. When I got up and looked out the window there was a layer of ice on the pavement. Rats. I decided I'd better pull the bike with studded tires down from storage and take that to work.

My studded tire winter bike hadn't been touched since last March. When I pulled the bike down I was dismayed to see the chain was completely rusted and seized up so that it wouldn't spin. I threw the bike on the repair stand and spent some time oiling the chain and breaking the links loose so they would go through the derailleur. I hadn't accounted for that time, and wound up leaving the house 15 minutes later than planned.

As anticipated, the ride straight into that wind sucked. The air temperature was 18°F, and with the 30 mph headwind that put the wind chill at -1°F. Gusts pushed the wind speed higher than that, but thankfully weren't hitting the 60 mph we were getting during the night. The wind was strong enough that if I stopped pedaling I would come to a stop in about 10 feet.

Between the wind and the ice, I averaged about 6 mph. I had to stop a few times to drag large tree branches off of the MUP, where they had fallen due to the wind. I started to get pretty cold as I rode, as the wind went straight through my clothing. Oddly enough, despite how cold I felt, about five miles into the ride a steady drip of sweat started to fall from my left eyebrow. It would pool and freeze in the bottom of my ski goggles. Strange.

It took an hour and 15 minutes to ride the 8 miles to the office. Today was one of the days where if I didn't have a long streak going, I probably would have thrown in the towel and driven. I arrived to work 15 minutes late, a frozen popsicle and in a foul mood. When I put my bike in the rack and tried to lock it up, I discovered that my lock had frozen solid and wouldn't move. I decided that if someone wanted my crappy old winter bike they could have it, left it unlocked and went inside to warm up.