For reasons too complicated yet mundane to go into, I wound up getting about 90 minutes worth of sleep on Wednesday night.

I checked the temperature as I waited for the bus; 31 degrees.

My plan: to throw my bike on the bus, and take a leisurely ride home in the afternoon, when it was (much) warmer.

And then the bus – running, for whatever reason, a minute or two early – went sailing past.

I did the math in my fatigue-fogged head; wait half an hour for the next bus and be fifteen minutes late for work, or jump on my bike and go for it, taking the short, but less-scenic and more-dangerous route (via Frogtown rather than Summit Avenue) to work, and be there before the next bus even got to my stop.

So I jumped on and started riding.

Now, remember – I said I was “fatigue-fogged”.

While it wasn’t windy, biking creates its own breeze, ergo its own wind chill.  And that was fine; I was wearing a sweatshirt and a ocuple of T’s.

But no gloves.

By the time I got a mile, to about Victoria, I was feeling it; I’d forgotten how badly hands can hurt when they’re cold.  I thought, alternately, about waiting for the bus (which was still close to half an hour away) or turning around and heading home, either to get gloves or to wait for the bus.

But I kept pedaling as I pondered, stopping at the odd stop sign to flex and rub my hands, before I resumed the pothole slalom that is Minnehaha Avenue through Frogtown.

End result: I made it, generally fine but with hands curled into frozen claws.  A long, hot shower in the office locker room cured most ills, though.

And so it’s time to get ready for another go-around!

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Friday, March 20th, 2009 at 7:51 am and is filed under Biking, mitch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.