Snow & wind

You really can't tell in this picture but I took it because there was an intense snow squall going on. One of these days I'm going to figure out how to capture snow. I may need to go outside with professional quality lights and figure it out but I will. It may need to wait until next year, because I'm hoping that this is the LAST snow we'll see this winter.

Yesterday started out lovely-- I think you could have called it mild. I decided to bike into work, starting with biking with my daughter to school. We figured we'd have to leave our bikes there overnight because we'd be coming home after dark, but she elected to ride anyway and that was fine with me.

I've been a very cautious rider lately for a couple of reasons, but my route to work is pretty simple and not too trafficky. As with most routes, if you study the lights & traffic you can usually come up with a reliable strategy for avoiding most potential conflicts. My ride in was lovely-- it could have been a vacation week, the traffic was so light. There are a couple of places where I am extra cautious, like the place where I cross over 4 lanes of traffic to make a left turn onto a bridge. I know that the traffic often gets stopped further up the road long enough for me have the whole 4 lanes to myself for the whole amount of time it takes me to ride that block, so I drifted leisurely across the 4 lanes and it was absolutely fine, even with extra caution. Then there's a part where I have to go down a narrow one-way street with cars parked on both sides and then take a left onto another narrow one-way street; this often requires caution if cars behind me are being aggressive. Today, the cars behind me were being freakishly polite and stayed well back so I took my left easily.

I passed the place where I crashed last year without incident, but with memories. I rode along the dock a bit to see if I could get a new & interesting angle on my favorite scene. Parked my bike, walked into work like the Environmental Superhero that I am, changed into work clothes.

The way back: during the day it started to snow; not a lot but little maddening snowflakes. It was 38 degrees, how did the sky manage to make and maintain snowflakes above freezing? Clearly it was a day to defy laws of nature. I tried to head out a little bit early for no other reason than I wanted to, but kept getting delayed in conversations with coworkers. I hit the road at 5 p.m. I had 45 minutes to make a ride that usually takes 25 minutes or so.

Immediately the wind slammed me like a wall of styrofoam. I rode by my usual bus stop full of the usual people and could barely stay upright and make forward progress, the wind was so awful. I was pedaling maniacally. By the time I went two blocks I felt like I was abusing my cardiovascular system. I pressed on, though, knowing that the real test was yet to come. I ride up this big ugly highway feeder road, then across a long ugly bridge which usually has a lot of road debris. On the bridge, the wind kept coming around and slamming first from straight on and then from the side. It seemed like a real possibility I could get hit with a powerful gust and get tossed sideways into a car. I kept powering on. It was an incredible workout. I wondered if I was going to have a cardiac incident-- it's been months since I've biked any significant amount. How out of shape was I? I was happy to see every red light for the chance to gather up some oxygen & red blood cells and make sure they were getting along all right.

There are two problems with biking in strong wind besides having to ride 3 times harder over the same distance. One is the hazard of objects being blown into you. We have trees, there's lots of sand on the roads, and people are often not careful with their junk. Every part of town has its trash day; when it's windy it can be a disaster. Then there's the risk of old houses just falling apart in the wind. I know my house rocks in the wind; eventually something's going to shake off. I picked up a weird metal band that got stuck in my spokes; after I pulled it out I thought I heard something else going on somewhere around my tires but I didn't want to stop to explore too long. I know I've shown this picture off a lot in real life, but this is what I picked up the last time we had lovely weather back in January; this stupid nail ended up costing me $60 in repairs. Then the bike shop discovered lots of other perilous mechanical problems (broken spoke, worn out chain & chain rings, broken pedal, etc. etc... it's always been my philosophy that urban bikes are made to be pounded on) so I dropped another $200 to make my bike run like a well-oiled, not-worn-out-at-all machine. I couldn't bear the thought of something else tearing through my bike (and if I'm perfectly honest, costing me more money!).



The other problem with biking in wind is the noise. I rely a lot on listening to what's behind me. I can tell if there's a vehicle, what kind of vehicle it's likely to be, how fast it's coming up behind me. I would never wear an iPod in traffic because I need to hear. Strong wind can drown out the sound of cars or bikes coming up behind. I don't like being startled. For me not being able to hear is like wearing blinders.

Once I hit Broadway, things got better. The ride up the feeder road and across the bridge didn't have any shelter from the wind at all, but here the buildings on either side blocked the wind a little bit. There was more risk of stuff blowing around and tree branches falling, but traffic was backed up so I didn't have to worry about cars moving, I could blow right past them. There's a slight hill that I was worried about-- it always gets to me in the heat of summer, but it was nothing after being slammed by wind. Finally I made it to the stretch of road that I walk if I don't ride and it was lovely to ride it instead of walking. Some days walking seems excruciatingly slow.

Made it to my destination, dropped off my stuff, changed out of my clownish tights & shorty-pants into jeans, then went back out for coffee. That's when the snow started flying. It was crazy.

Fast forward a couple of hours; we finally got out of the school event and people were hanging around outside so I didn't feel the bikes were completely safe. Also, we were dead tired and wanted to be home as soon as possible. We decided to bike carefully on the sidewalks & bike lanes. I was freezing; don't know how the kid wasn't freezing, but we made it home.

I didn't ride today. It's back to under freezing. Whenever I'm on foot & I see the flocks of people who bike in all weather around here I think "lucky!" in my best Napoleon Dynamite inner voice. On Wednesday I am pretty sure people were thinking other things when they saw bikers struggling to move forward in that wind.