I can sympathize with that guy. When I was in college, I took a year off and worked at a job in northern New Hampshire that winter. I lived 10 miles outside town (Franconia), and had to hitch hike to work and back every day. It was seriously cold up there with a lot of snow. On the coldest day of that winter, I had difficulty getting a ride and walked almost the entire way to work. The low temperature that morning was -35 F and it was -10 when I finally got to work.

At the time, it never dawned on me to ride my bike to work, and I'm not sure it would have even been possible with the snow, cold temperatures and gear we had back then. Mountain bikes hadn't even been invented yet, and we didn't have the kind of cold-weather clothing available now.