Today was my third bike commute of the year (my knees still won't let me get back on the bike full-time). One might say I picked an awful day for it, given the 10+ inches of snow that's been dumped on us the previous day (it's really a winter of snowstorms in Toronto!) But I had to leave the house kind of on a last-minute urgent notice, and I knew that a bike would be faster than the TTC in those conditions.

What can I say?.. I took about ten minutes just getting out from my neighbourhood onto the main roads (a ride of about 1 km - for our non-metric friends, that's just a tad over half a mile). The snow was basically impassable by bike for long stretches - I had to dismount and walk. Main streets were clearer, but horribly backed up, and the huge snowbanks on the sides gave me almost no chance to slip by traffic jams as bike commuters typically are able to do. Road conditions required a lot of concentration; and I'm sure lots of drivers thought that many times I was swerving all over the place completely out of control, while I was in fact doing abrupt and precise front wheel corrections (MAD SKILLZZZ D00D ), necessary to keep the bike in control in deep rutted snow. Of course, I made sure I had a fair chunk of lateral space to play with.

Despite all the delays I still made it more or less on time, and had a blast doing that. Saw one bike messenger on my way in, and three other commuters, one of whom was not riding, but was standing on the sidewalk next to her bike, with a look on her face that said: "WTF are all these mountains of white crap everywhere and WTF am I supposed to do now???"

Had a couple of people comment along the lines of "Wow, tough weather to ride in." Friendly, good stuff.