Well, my streak is officially over at 148 days.

Got up early this morning to blow snow out of our driveway. When I'd gone to bed about 8" had fallen since yesterday morning. Looks like we got another couple of inches overnight, and more expected to fall early today. The snow on our driveway had been driven over a couple times, so I decided I'd better get some of it off now. If you let it sit, then you wind up with these icy ruts across your driveway that last for weeks before the sun finally takes care of them.

Once the driveway was cleared, I hopped on the bike. Typical of our area, this much snow doesn't warrant school or business closings, so there was no staying home today. If our city shut down for every weather event we'd be stuck at home for 5 months every year. Time to head to work.

I knew it would be slow pedaling for my 8 mile commute so I was rolling about 1/2 hour earlier than normal. Plows hadn't yet run down our cul-de-sac, but I was surprised how easy I moved through it even though my legs were still completely wasted from yesterday's ride home. "Great!" I thought, "this will be easier than I expected." That all changed a few hundred yards later when I hit the main roads. These were emergency snow routes which means plows start clearing them immediately once 2" has accumulated. The only problem was the plows hadn't dropped their blades all the way which left a solid chunk of rutted ice with drifts of snow accumulation on top of it. I suppose they didn't drop their blades all the way because they knew they'd be coming back to make a final pass once the snow stopped falling, and they wanted to save their blade edges as long as they could. Unfortunately it made for a bad surface for a car, and an even worse surface for a bike.

I struggled mightily to get down the road. I couldn't find a gear that was low enough to let me blast through the drifts, but high enough that wouldn't cause my rear tire to break loose and spin on the bottom layer of solid compact. The studded tires just weren't enough to bite in, and I found that I couldn't even hold a straight line for 10 feet. Looking at my tracks I left it looked like a drunk monkey was riding the bike. My trail was nearly as wide as it was long with me wobbling back and forth trying to keep the bike upright. I'd slide out and come to a stop frequently, but then would have trouble gaining enough initial speed to get going again. Thankfully I had left early enough that right now there were no cars on the road, but that was going to change soon.

What worried me more is I knew that a mile down this main road the conditions would get even worse when I hit the unplowed parts that I rode home through last night. After it took me nearly 10 minutes to ride 1/2 mile I knew that there was no way I was going to make it to work on time. I probably could have walked faster than I was riding, and there was no way I was walking the whole 8 miles to work and back. So with my tail between my legs, I conceded defeat and turned around for the trip home. At least I gave it the ol' college try.

Bummer that my streak ended, but I knew it was bound to happen. We've had something like 28" of snow so far this year, and I made it through most of it. They'll have the streets cleared by tomorrow morning so hopefully I'll be riding again. And hopefully not having a consecutive streak going doesn't kill my motivation to keep riding even when things get difficult.