Today was a good news/bad news kind of commute.

First the good news: For the first day in at least 2 1/2 weeks we should not see any negative temperatures. This last cold stretch has seen every day having the windchill below zero, if not the actual air temp. Most days the air temp high had been in the single digits or lower. Today, though, it was 8°F this morning with a balmy 1°F wind chill. High temp is supposed to climb into the low 20s. I'm going to feel like wearing my beach gear on the way home tonight.

And the bad news: we wound up getting 7" of snow on Friday through Saturday morning, after which the air temp dropped to -24°F with the windchill breaking -50°F. These temps turned any compacted snow (i.e. driven or walked upon) into solid chunks of rock hard ice. However by this morning the plows had pretty much taken care of everything and scraped off the top layer leaving a icy but smooth base on which to ride.

No problem on the 1 mile stretch of road I take to get to the MUP. When I arrived at the MUP I saw that it too had been plowed, so I followed the path on my usual route to work. Unfortunately, a 1/2 mile down the trail I came around a corner and discovered that they hadn't yet plowed the entire MUP. I didn't know how long the unplowed section would last, so I decided to just suck it up and ride on.

Turns out there was about 2 1/2 miles of unplowed MUP. By the time I realized what kind of ride I was in for, I was committed and was going to half to back-track a long way to take a different route. So I just pressed on.

The first half of the unplowed section had been heavily traveled by foot and bike traffic, leading to the aforementioned rutted ice. A few spots were so rough and rutted that I just couldn't maintain enough speed to ride through it, so I had to walk. The second half, however, was pretty much unmolested powdery snow which meant it was rideable but due to the depth I had to use a very low gear and couldn't maintain much more than 5 mph. Most of it was in the 7" depth range, but some of the drifts I broke through easily were 12" or more. A few spots where I'd only see my feet pop out at the top of the pedal stroke.

Well, it took a long time but I made it. Wound up getting a much greater workout and a lot sweatier than I'd expected. But my commuting streak stays alive at 203.