Snowbanks and Solstices

I was able to ride in today.  The weather has been dry enough during the past couple of days to dry up most of the black ice that’s out there so I took a chance and it was worth it.  Even though I had to dismount and dig through two snowbanks to get here to work.  (There’s a shortcut I can use if I’m on two; it’s a small bike path that connects the back corner of the parking lot with a dead-end street, that runs down to the main drag to get here.  There are huge rocks in place to keep vehicles from passing, but the bike fits between them.)

The problem is that both the dead end street, and this place’s parking lot, utilize the access points to plow the snow up and out of the way.  In the wintertime, this often leaves me with having to use the back roads that cagers are relegated to using (to get from the main drag, to here), even if I’m on two.  The snowbanks are too high and solid to get through.

Today though, I took a chance and found that the snow banks were small enough that I was able to kick a path through one side of the dead-end street pile and ride around it, and then just get some speed up and plow through the bigger one that was blocking the parking lot.  (I got off the bike first and cleared some of the larger snow chunks out of the way.)

The weather had been saying clear and 40’s tomorrow but now they’re saying cold and about an inch of snow.  WTF.  An inch isn’t bad, but since the nights are getting so cold, even an inch of snow is making the roads slick as shit in the mornings so I’ll probably be back to the Jeep.  Drat.

Anyway, moving on…

As I’m sure man of you know, today is the Winter Solstice.  It officially marks the end of the Sun running away from us, and when he (she?) finally decides to head back up where he/she belongs; securely over our heads.

Today will be our shortest day  (I saw this morning that sunrise was @ 7:10 and sunset will be @ 4:15.  That’s barely over 9 hours of daylight!  No wonder the temps get so cold – our heat source is basically turned off for 63% of the day!

Thankfully, though, s/he’s heading back up toward us.  We wish s/he’d get a move on and be back up here in a few days, but that would mean we’d had some sort of tragic rotational tear and were probably about to die, so I guess we can wait it out.

Sure would be nice to be riding again, daily, though.

Ride Hard, Take Chances