Five straight days now. It's not the jacket or booties or leg warmers or arm warmers or full finger gloves that stop me. It's cleaning my beautiful bike after a simple ride! Screw that crap!

I went the first day of the rain for 25 miles. Road down to the Back Bay and back. Bike was filthy. Dirt and mud splattered everywhere. Chain a mess. Brakes a mess. Wheels and spokes a mess.

So I put it on the bike stand, took the wheels off and proceded to clean the bike for the next 40 minutes. Last time I'm doing that.

We're blessed (cursed) with like 10 days of rain a year down here. Oddly, 6 of them were in a row and the infrastructure is ill-equipped to support drainage for such once-every-decade storms.

I don't care if it's 2 degrees where you live. I don't care if it rained every day for the past 6 months where you live. I don't care if you ride a mountain bike in 9 inches of snow with windshield wipers on your glasses.

I live where I live because I don't have to do all that **** every time I want to go for a ride and I damn well won't apologize for it. I'm proud of it.

To me it's like watching those survival idiots on TV. Oh, you can take a rancid three-week old carcass of a jackelope and actually eat the stomach contents? Oh, great. Glad for you. Fun to watch. But you can find me at Ruth's Chris discussing your idiocy with my fellow weather-weenie friends.