Consecutive bicycle work commute number 1568:
My wife and I traveled to Ohio over the holidays to visit her family. While we were there the temps never dropped below about 40°F, with the daily highs in the 50s and 60s. Coming from sub-zero South Dakota it was a shock, and I figured I lost my winter skin.
We returned on the 1st in order to beat a huge storm system that was rolling across South Dakota. It hit on the 2nd. Thankfully, I had originally taken both the 2nd and 3rd off of work expecting to still be traveling, so I didn't have to worry about trying to commute in the middle of the storm. I just hunkered down at home and enjoyed the fact that my consecutive commuting streak remained intact.
By the morning of the 4th, we had received 14" of snow with more still falling. Schools were closed. Nearly every business was closed. The owner of my company sent out a mandate that everyone was to work from home on this day because the city was so overwhelmed with snow that most of the roads were still unplowed. Of course, working from home and not riding would be "cheating" in my book, so I decided to ignore the mandate and figure out a way to ride to the client's office anyway. I decided if they wanted to fire me for showing up for work during bad weather, then that's their prerogative.
I got up extra early, knowing that one: the unplowed snow was going to slow me way down and two: I wanted to share the roads with as few vehicles as possible. I ran the snowblower for the 5th time in 36 hours, then loaded up the fat bike. It was 21°F with a 15 mph headwind.
The first few blocks through the unplowed snow were tricky. I tried to ride in the ruts left by the few trucks who dared to be out. My pedals would hit the snow on either side of the ruts at the bottom of the stroke.
I made it to a main road which is normally too busy for me to ride. However, my plan worked: given that this is a major route they had done a good job keeping the snow clear. Also, because of the early hour and the fact that everything was closed, traffic was extremely light. The only downside was this road is extremely hilly, so that really slowed me down (more so than the snow or the headwind.)
I pretty much used the strategy of staying on the normally busy roads for the whole ride to the client location downtown. There were a few spots where I had to ride down a couple unplowed streets, but outside of those sections it really wasn't a bad ride at all.
About a block from the office one of the lanes of the road was completely blocked by a snow drift that was taller than me. There were no cars coming so I got off the bike and snapped a picture. The photo doesn't give the true perspective, as this drift is about 8 feet tall:
