Humanize the Earth!

bike winter!

Last night was one of my best bike rides of the year so far. It started snowing around midday and by the time I left my downtown Chicago office around 6:30, it was really starting to pile up. It wasn’t too far below 30 degrees so wasn’t icy, just wet. The cars had a really hard time with slippery pavement, and I actually could go just as fast as they were going in traffic, when they were moving. Most of the time they weren’t moving because there were so many of them, however, and I was able to either ride between the two lanes going my direction (in the 4-6 inch deep pile pushed there by the cars), or in the on-coming lanes (mostly wasn’t any traffic there at all, so was able to ride in the ruts of the previous traffic). I sure was wet when I got home. What fun!

When I got home I shoveled snow for the first time in my new place at the Hub Co-op. We have a huge area to shovel, living on a corner (lots of sidewalk) with a big courtyard we use to get bikes in and out of the basement, and then the sidewalk back to the alley. There was probably 6 inches on the ground when I did my shoveling and I’m guessing another 2 when Sam went out later to do it again. Looking now at the unshovelled walkways, I’d guess we got a total of 8 or 9 inches. We’ll see how the snow-riding is today after things have frozen after yesterday. Maybe the roads will be cleaner due to salt and plowing. I’m guessing I’ll have to really ride in the traffic lane and not much to the right because it’ll be too snowy/icy over there.