On Ice

I didn't ride my bike to work today. In fact, I'm not riding at all.

Blasphemy, you say.

Well, I took one look out my window and saw ice everywhere. Not just patches; I think the sidewalk in front of my place was the beginning of the Great Queens Glacier. At least the light was interesting:

Yesterday's Ride, Today's Storm

I am so glad I took my ride yesterday.  I thought I’d sneak in a short ride this morning.  But the snow started earlier than had been forecast:  When I woke up, just before 8 am, the wind was already driving needles of cotton against my window and the faces of people ploughing ahead on their way to work or school.  They weren’t supposed to encounter such weather conditions until the time most of them would have been going home.  Not surprisingly, some of them returned early to the warmth and comfort of their hot cocoa and friends, lovers, pets, books, TV shows and videos.

Pedaling as soft, puffy flakes eddy onto my shoulders would not have been bad.  But the conditions I saw this morning would are the sort you envision in a Dickens story or, perhaps, a Bergmann film. I have mentioned, in previous posts, other meteorological “lines in the sand” I’ve drawn.  For example, I am sometimes willing to ride in the snow or rain, but not when both are falling—or when they’re accompanied by sleet.  I also generally don’t ride if I can barely see out my window or if the morning commute looks like the Battle of Stalingrad.  

Well, I don’t know what the Battle of Stalingrad looked like.  For that matter, I don’t know, exactly, what a Dickensian morning looks like, though his writing and my imagination create a vivid image.  But I have seen morning in a Bergmann film.  Anyway, you know what I mean.

Days like today aren’t for riding, at least for me.  But I can bask in the glow of yesterday’s ride.  

Through The Snow

By now, I'm sure that you've heard about the snowstorms that blew through this part of the world.   Where I live, in Astoria, the official snowfall total was seven inches (about 18 cm), about the same as what was recorded just across the river in Central Park.  Other nearby locales had a foot (about 30 cm).  

While these nebular accumulations are not exceptional, they are the most we've had in some time. What made this storm particularly harsh were the gale-force winds, which helped to drive the temperature to the lowest level (3F or -16C) we've had in three years.  So, it's not surprising that almost nobody was outside until this morning.  In fact, the only people I saw on bikes were delivering restaurant meals.

Somehow I found myself thinking about people who take multiyear or trans-global bike tours.  Surely they must encounter conditions like these somewhere along the way. Perhaps their bikes end up looking, at least for a while, like this:

From 360 Niseko

 

Catnapping Through A Snowstorm

Mommy's not going for a ride today.  So we're going to take a nap.

That's probably what they were thinking the other day, as the weather outside was frightful.

That photo, however, roused them from their REM reverie: