Oh. My. Deity! The weather is miserable, my wrist is still broken and the dust on the Rescue Bike gets thicker every day. I miss riding my bike. I miss flexing my wrist. I miss not freezing my face off when I’m outside for 3 minutes.
I had the good fortune to be able to pick up my eldest from school the other day. Arriving late I parked 2 blocks away as the crush of pick-up parents and nannies had taken all of the available parking already. I walked towards the school and connected with another father, significantly under-dressed making the same journey. ”I should have worn a hat” he lamented as I jammed my toque down over my ears. I nodded in agreement, glad I wasn’t him. The wind from the north picked up as the gaggle of frozen tot-transporters stood shivering , each waiting for their charge to be set free of the sandstone smart-factory in which we were not permitted to seek cover.
By the time the boy was finally out in the parking lot with me, I was frozen. He was not, dressed smartly in proper winter gear while I shivered with the -21C wind snaking it’s way down my neck and across my face. I was miserable walking back to the car, but grateful just the same when we passed a bike locked to a nearby sign, snow jammed in the tread – evidence of it’s recent use. This is not sane cycling weather.
This morning on the way to work, again with a -21C wind, I could not help but enjoy the warmth of my now-antique heated seat. I saw a lone headlight bob past us on the bike path, a solitary figure, resolute in their smugness and madness. I admire both admittedly – the willingness to cycle in miserable conditions purely to avoid driving says something about one’s martyrdom-factor. It’s not quite smug as a Prius in oil country, but it’s up there.
It goes without saying that riding in a stiff headwind in freezing-was-several-big-ticks-above-temperatures requires a certain degree of madness whether your cycling is borne of a love for cycling itself, less-than-ideal economics or an unfortunate series of decisions behind the wheel that has resulted in a court-mandated vacation from driving. Choosing to ride your bicycle in this weather is simply mad.
What I’ve noticed lately, particularly on my drive home is that a bicycle ride would be infinitely more pleasurable. Sure, there were days when I was immeasurably happy to see the top of that last hill I had to climb, thankful I didn’t live any farther away or higher up. Hating the wind. Yet as I float home in a sea of brake lights each night, the speedometer barely registering any velocity despite being on the (as in the, not one of the) primary north/south artery, I can’t help but succumb to the greener-grass syndrome.
Sure, I’d be freezing to death and I wouldn’t have this nice warm seat inside a nice wind-free car with a silk-voiced radio announcer telling me my drive home was going to take double-extra long today because someone couldn’t negotiate an off-ramp and everyone else wants to look at them now. But I’d have something I can’t seem to achieve on the road. Motion.
Okay, that’s obviously not pedantically, precisely, one-hundred percent accurate. Clearly if I get into my car at point A and get out at point B, there’s been motion even if that motion took place entirely in first gear. On the bike though, motion is obvious. It’s visceral and tangible (and all to physical should you bump into something not in motion on your present vector). It’s rewarding. Your legs and lungs are burning with each crank of the pedals. You see and feel the world moving around you in response. You are rewarded with the passing of each sub-conscious landmark, every rut and heave in its place, ticking off small accomplishments.
Back in the car you fiddle with the heat, the radio, the seat. You’d like to check your email because your brain is entirely disengaged from the task at hand and is no longer capable of simply being but the constant crawl of the traffic around you precludes that. The line of traffic, brake-lights bright, snakes over the hill and far away. Each meter of movement is not progress but a taunt. Speed up, coast down, up, down. On and on it goes as the traffic whiplashes back and forth.
It’s enough to make you crave a headwind.