Who's a bigger fool. . .
On my way home yesterday along a riverside bike path, it was raining pretty hard in 55F weather. This was part of a quick warm up after a lot of snow and ice. I think you can see where this is going.
It was dark, and I noticed a little water on the path. But a couple hundred feet in front of me, I saw a blinkie moving forward. I assumed that the path was ridable at least to where the blinkie was. To go back would have been about a two mile diversion.
The water got deeper and deeper. I think it topped out at about where my bottom bracket was--it could have been as much as a foot deep. I could feel my panniers dragging in the water. It went on like that for 100-200 feet. Then, about 100 yards farther, I had another 50-100 foot stretch of deep water. I just kept thinking, "Keep moving forward, keep moving forward."
Fortunately, my Cross Check made it through, but I'm risking that kind of thing again. This bad decision could have had much, much worse consequences. On the plus side, I've been thinking about upgrading my crank and bottom bracket. This may move that decision from the "want" category to the "need" category.