A Bicycle!?

I just got home from the most exhausting bike ride I've had since arriving in Indianapolis. It was, surprisingly, the 4.1 mile route I ride to and from work every day, taken through windy suburban neighborhoods.

'How is this so', you ask? I shall deliberate no longer!

I make it a point to ride my bike to work as much as possible, but even more so on snowy (or otherwise treacherous) occasions. I prefer the lazy, quiet backroads on my bike to the fast and scary highway in my car. It snowed today, though it was nothing spectacular. The forecast warned 3-6" over the course of the day, and by the time I left work the forecast had been fulfilled...little more than 3" of snow had stuck to the ground. As I began to ride, I soon realized that I was quite unstable, and quite unable to steer in a straight line. This was no ordinary 3" of snow. It might as well have been 6" of thick mud. I struggled both to stay upright and to comprehend why such a seemingly small amount of snow was giving me so much trouble. I turned off a small side street onto a bigger road...the snow was just as deep, though tire ruts made it even harder to keep the bike underneath me. As I labored, I imagined being in a cyclocross race negotiating a sand pit, 4.1 miles long. Soon I began to sweat, and I stopped on the side of the road to remove my balaclava and one layer of gloves. The trek continued, and the falling snow turned to stinging sleet. I let out a string of expletives occasionally - some for the sleet, some for the startle of catching a hidden rut, and others just for good measure. This odyssey was far from over.

I surged to gain speed and keep up with moving traffic across the one busy intersection encountered in my daily commute, and after I slowed down in the following neighborhood my legs and body began a familiar whine. I was bonking! 3 miles of riding and I had run out of energy...I shouldn't have offered that cookie to my co-worker at lunch. I began to feel cold and exhausted. I stopped on the side of the road again to don the clothing I had recently removed. Grinding away in the easiest gear, I struggled along, my front and rear tires slipping wildly to whichever direction they fancied. A severe case of Tourette's wouldn't have made it any more difficult to ride in a straight line.

I crossed a bridge that spanned over the major highway on which I would have driven my car to work. Traffic was crawling, and I stopped for a moment to gawk at the sludgy snow raked high between tire tracks. Near home I spotted a limping old man walking in the middle of the lane of oncoming traffic. Cars had to stop and snake around him. Not knowing if he was looking for an escaped cat or had himself broken out, I trucked on to the next turn where my front door beckoned. I pulled into the parking lot of my apartment complex and approached a man taking out his garbage. When I rolled passed him, he looked at me and said, incredulously, "A bicycle?! You crazy?!"

I am not entirely sure whether his last words were meant as a query or an exclamation.