Winter: Over It

One of the points of pride for my fair city is the hardship of winter. One of those "hardships" (I use quotes because riding a bike isn't ever really a hardship, at least not in the struggling to feed your family sense of the word. It's completely self inflicted) is cycling through the winter. It pretty much sucks, but you learn to love it because it makes you hard and lends our cycling community a good portion of its character.

Loving this winter has been especially difficult since this has been the worst winter for riding in memory. We were hit with an ice storm around Christmas and the side roads have been damn near impenetrable until last week or so. Pretty much everytime I went out I fell at least once, and this experience was a common one.

The point to all this back story is that today it was 4 degrees with a -14 windchill and the ride home felt great. My torso was warm, my feet were toasty, and my hands were in heaven. One of the few perks of winter is that at some point you just get over it and the weather stops affecting you pretty much altogether. It was perfectly lovely out. Now bear in mind, if this were early December and it was 4 degrees you can bet your ass that I'd be staying indoors and driving my car. At that time of year that's downright mean cold. But at the end of January it ain't shit.

I'm not trying to paint myself as a hero, since there are plenty of dudes who ride in the weather a hell of a lot more than I, I'm just reveling in that moment when you get over it. Winter can suck my balls, we'll be done with it soon enough.