Riding when it's cold

So, I've been bad. I've been writing entries and saving them as drafts and publishing nothing.

It's gotten cold here, and I think everyone knows that when I say cold, I mean that it's a freezing 46 degrees outside. However, because the internet knows all things, the reason it seems so cold is that it feels like 43. This is likely why my decision to ride my bicycle to campus in thin sweatshirt was a poor decision.


There is a girl who must live in my neighborhood who often rides to class about the same time that I do on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. One day, while I was waiting at the stop light, she blatantly rode her bicycle up the lane behind me, then past me, and stopped directly in front of me. Even those of us on our refined, primitive biycles have manners, and I have intensely disliked this girl ever since. This girl, we'll just call her Rude Girl, has legs the size of my forearm. Not the length of my forearm--they're probably as long as the entire bottom half of my torso--but incredibly tiny. Now, I have nothing against excessively skinny people, but this girl has no muscle on her legs. She does, however, have a very pretty bicycle. It's blue with yellow grip tape, and it's actually funtional at being a multi-speed bicycle (unlike either of my multi-speed bicycles). It's also nicer than my bicyles, and this means that it's faster than my bicycles. The fact that I dislike her, she's rude, and she has a better bicycle is very painful for my pride. However, in spite of the fact that I can never catch up to her superior bicycle as I trail her down the large hill that Speedway is, I'm a better bicycle rider than she is. There is only a small section of the road that goes uphill, and this is where I always catch her and pass her. It's the second greatest moment of every morning, the first greatest being my first cup of coffee.

But on the topic of cold weather bicycling. I need some gloves! I seem to have lost mine in the nine or so months since I last used them, and since we're now down in the fourties, my hands are clamoring for them (by which which I mean numb). I used to have a very great little pair of converitble mittens. These are basically fingerless gloves which have mitten-top attached to them. While riding your bike, you flip the mitten-top down over your fingers, and they all hang out together, sharing warmth and war stories. When you get to the bike rack, you flip the tops off, and voila! You use your unemcombered fingertips to manuever your bicycle lock and key. They're a great invention, but they're lost.

Yet perhaps the greatest cold weather bicycling invention is the Snot Rocket. My father originally taught me this art, which I put to very good use during my youthful soccer career (after the time I blew my nose on my shirt and left a huge snotwad on my sleve, disgusting my teammates, I needed a new solution). I had tried carrying Kleenex in my soccer socks, but it never worked well, and when I finally mastered the Snot Rocket after a messy learning period, my quality of life greatly improved.



I have used the Snot Rocket before while paused on my bicycle, usually at stoplights, but today was the first time I'd used it while in motion. There's only one stoplight on my ride home, and with the weather the way it was, my nose was dripping the way that my bathtub does. Having passed the stoplight but with my nose re-full of snot, I needed a solution. I must say, seeing the snot fly behind me as I ride away is quite a thrill, and I can't believe I haven't done it before.

Now I'm going to go get a flu shot.