Week Fifteen - Day Two

I'm feeling a lot better today, thanks for asking!

I went to bed at 8:30 pm last night and slept right through til 6:30 am. I felt great when I first woke up, though by late morning I was fading again. Perhaps it'll be another early-to-bed night.

I drove again today. I figured I wouldn't bike again until I could eat properly again, so I would give myself a rest from biking today to see if my stomach felt well enough to handle normal food again. I've been eating just fine today, though I'm still feeling pretty tired. Perhaps I'll venture out onto the snowy streets with Mike tomorrow. I won't promise anything, because even the short walks from my house to the car and from the parking garage to my building on campus have been surprisingly chilly. How can I possibly bike outdoors for half an hour if I feel like my nose is about to fall off when I'm outside for 30 seconds??

Even if I wimp out for the rest of the week, next week is supposed to be warmer, so I can take comfort in knowing that I can bike again then. I've been thinking about setting a limit for the temperature - like, say, making it a rule that if it's going to be colder than -20C that day, I'm not going to bike. It would make sense for me to come up with something like that, but I feel it would be premature to do that at this point without having biked in really cold weather. How will I know that -20C is my limit if I don't try it? What if it's really more like -25C, or -15C? I need to get out there and give it a shot, test my boundaries a bit before I know exactly where they lie.

That's my argument for trying to bike tomorrow. I'll see if I can actually get myself to do it, though. It is freakin' cold out there! And whatever rare cyclists I do see all look like they're sporting 26" (mountain bike sized) tires with huge knobby treads AND big studs in them. None of those dinky 700cc (road bike sized) tires like mine. I'm honestly afraid the cold might weaken the spokes and then the roughness of going over the frozen, rutty snow will snap them. I'm afraid my tires just won't grip the snow or ice the same way in temperatures this cold. I'm afraid I will get frost bite or at least wind or cold burn on my inner thighs, toes, fingers, and face. But of course, how will I know any of this if I don't try?

Perhaps I can use my natural curiosity to my advantage here: be a scientist, Johnson! So many questions, and there is only one way to find the answers - EXPERIMENT! Give it a try! And maybe, just maybe, my desire to seek out new knowledge will trump my survival instinct and it'll get me out biking to work in the freezing cold. Maybe . . . just maybe. I guess we'll have to see tomorrow!