It gets better... I took the plunge this morning, or tried to. Weather was dry & thunderstorms were a remote concept predicted for later in the day. My bike knew better, apparently & decided to stage a major breakdown as I was departing. Haven't diagnosed the full root cause or exact nature of failure yet, but chain got sucked between the freewheel & the hub, and now the freewheel is kinda flapping in the breeze. It might have torn loose from the threading on the hub, or had an internal failure, due either to the outward pressure of the chain, or rotational force applied as the bike came to a stop with the chain wedged where it was.
So I drove to work again. Well, we had a pretty nasty thunderstorm just before Miller time at work today; though arguably there was a narrow window right after that where I could have made it home before the next storm that is brewing up right now, I'm not lucky enough for that. If I was on my bike, I know the weather would have rearranged its schedule accordingly so I would have been caught in a storm's full fury. C'est la Vie.