Just Another Day Bicycling In Rochester's Winter
Boots slick with sludge slip on the peddles, slamming my groin onto the bicycle frame as I struggle to summon the steam to plow the trailer through the morass of mashed potatoes that suffices for Stewart Street on a frigid February morning. The extra layers of clothing help cushion the blow (as does being a bit of a masochist), but now I have a wedgie four layers deep, and no time to attend to it with a car sputtering it's way fitfully up behind me. With a bestial growl, I haul myself up by the handlebars and spin my own tire savagely in frustration a couple of revolutions, before finally relenting and leap hastily off to shove the rig ruthlessly up the rest of the street.
Now I know what your thinking; and yes, a trailer is often more trouble than it's worth to a bicyclist when navigating the waist high snowbanks that block every other corner and sidewalk But I find it a necessary tool when one lacks a trunk. It makes up for its cumbersome presence by playing the part of what would otherwise doubtless be the bed of a pick-up if I could drive, hauling things that are too heavy or bulky to fit comfortably in a backpack; laundry, groceries, cardboard for the dog to tear up in her crate, said dog when she is too tired to run… and yes even furniture when I move.
I manage to cross onto the slick-packed substrate of snow, sludge and ice that is South Ave after the most recent severe snowstorm without incident, taking heart in that at least from here my journey is literally all down hill beyond Highland Park, and I swiftly settle in to the familiar rhythm of alternation between shifting, standing, shifting, sitting and shifting again. An act of syncopation that so subsumes consciousness in its adaptive awareness to the immediacy of the road ahead as to seem sublime, yet simultaneously so ensconced in the movement of muscle, as to be but a tertiary thought to the thrum of the world around.
But alas, the gods and the universe are cold, crass, callous and cruel; callous in their cruelty, and cruelest when it is cold. Hence just as I begin building a bit of momentum, through my eyes watering against the bitter biting wind, I notice the light at Highland and South Ave has just turned red. Given a clear road and no cross-traffic, I'll often simply cut around any automotive impediments that may lie between me and my destination, beholden unto but one set of laws above and before all others;
"Come on, come on… Newton's law, Newton's law! " I mutter with fervent prayer, easing off the gas so as not to draw too close to the bus belching noxious clouds of sulfur that congeal in its wake, compounding the arctic air sapping the strength from my every breath.…. but to no avail. I pump the front break, the only one that works on this, my spare bike (my larger and more efficient 29er being stuffed in storage with a salt-rusted, over-stretched chain that slips in all but the hardest of gears), and the bald tire responds admirably.
And of course, for no other fruit than to further toy with my temperament, just as my kinetic energy is nearing its expenditure, the light changes yet again and the bus lurches forward about a hundred yards before pausing once more to pick up a passenger. Glancing behind, I note the pick-up with a plow about 20 meters and closing at a modest rate. But a bit of adrenaline yet lingers from my earlier encounter with the bike frame, and I floor it to circumvent my gargantuan gray and black, often add-plastered arch-nemesis; the RTS (a.k.a, RGRTA). The Great White Whale I can never catch, and yet am perpetually passing;
Over a distance of several miles, the buses may well have me bested in terms of time (barely). But inside of a mile or so, stop light to stop light, and especially down a hill such as this, I can easily do at least as well if not better (depending of course on such variables as traffic patterns, passengers, pedestrians and available paths of passing). Add to that the simple independence, self reliance, health benefits, flexibility and satisfaction of carrying anything I want, wherever I want, whenever I want, and you have the calculous by which I prefer to bike even in the heart of the frozen hell that is a Rochester winter. (either that, or I must be some sort of a masochistic adrenaline junky looking for a cheep challenge) I figure if I'm going to freeze, I might as well be getting somewhere while doing so, even if it leaves me half exhausted at the end of my journey. Then again, I don't know that I'd feel quite right if at the end of the day I weren't dirty, sweating, exhausted and frustrated from the effort of too much physical and mental exertion for too little reward. (did I mention I might be a masochist?)
My own exhaust combusts in long grayish-brown clouds not unlike that of the Chevy as it slips around me, condensing on the inside of my glasses, now several shades darker in their acclimation to the sharp temperature. Stinging sub-zero wind compounded by my own speed lashes it's frozen feral ferocity full in my face, simultaneously sucking the breath from my laboring lungs and swelling forth a torrent of snot and tears to condense in a cataract on my face and further fouling my facade. As the incline increases, I give over the gas to gravity (again owing homage to Newton) and take a moment to wipe at my lenses with a gloved thumb, thereby succeeding in smearing a sludge of salt and greece atop the already frozen surface. Yet even with a clean pair my visual acuity is only about 20/200, so I'm accustomed to the art of navigating through a haze of indistinct blurs bumbling about me, with little more than auditory cues, muscle memory, instinct and (above all) sheer dumb luck at escaping injury, and thus can afford to ignore the encumbrance for the moment.
Passing the traffic speedometer by Highland Hospital, I manage to make out my speed through the morass obscuring my vision to be 13mph.
Most days I can easily average at least 18mph down this particular stretch (faster without the trailer). But once the temperature reaches about 20 F, the wind makes one's eyes water more than is worth the trouble to attain such a modest velocity in heavy traffic. Furthermore, in single and sub-zero digit weather such as this, I'm happy to hit 9 or 10 mph, as anything approaching 15 mph smacks too strongly of frostbite.
It is by equal parts skill, intuition, attention and luck that I notice the ever increasing backlog of blobs forming ahead of me, and manage to pull aside without catalyzing or culminating in a collision and take the opportunity to attend to my obstructed vision by tearing them tenderly from my face and licking the lenses, thereby both cleaning and forestalling further fogging… if only for a few minutes. However said victory is as bitter-sweet as the taste of road-salt upon my tongue. Fore as soon as I replace them and manage to weave tentatively back into traffic…. it begins to snow.
Fat flakes plaster my face by the time I reach the corner of South and Gregory, and I navigate as much by the heady scent of late morning coffee wafting from the surrounding shops, as any other senses for where to turn. Turning, or rather slithering shakily , onto Gregory, I think of Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken", and how I now seek the one MOST traveled by, which lays ironically enough in the center of the street. Slaloming sloppily from patch to patch of pavement, I struggle to maintain some semblance of a straight line, foregoing all propriety to traffic patterns in efforts to maintain momentum, to which my fellow commuters are commendably considerate to my condition in both their caution in passing, and forbearance from laying on the horn.
Relief at seeing South Clinton relatively free of snow, is swiftly tempered upon turning once more headlong into the tearing wind as it cuts through the thin layer of my ski-mask. Screw safety, I'm grateful for the moderate protection of the sound-dampening earphones that save my ears at least from frostbite, but are too bulky to fit over or under a helmet. The rhythmic "tink" of the spare dog leash acting as zipper for the disheveled, duck-tape-torn yet still serviceably warm winter coat against the bike frame in time to my peddling, adds an annoying, yet triumphant tattoo to this, the home stretch to my final destination, reinvigorating effort with a resolve that is ill thwarted even by two more red lights, before I coast carefully into the parking lot of ABVI.
Back behind the loading dock where I lock up, I remove my hat with a heavy sigh, steam spouting from the 6 months growth of hair that adds both an extra layer of warmth and impediment to effective temperature regulation, leaving my face simultaneously sweating and frozen in the sharp shadow of the building. Limbs stiff with cold, I move to dig out my time card, already warn weary with this warmup workout to my day, yet none the less thinking forward to the handful of hours of manual labor lifting boxes and oversized sheets of paper that lay ahead. Fore truly life is indeed like riding a bicycle, in that one must keep moving to maintain their balance. And at the bottom of the socio-economic slope, the choices we have are merely what compromises to make that will allow us to keep going;
More effort and less comfort in exchange for more independence and flexibility among options of transportation; Smaller less efficient tires and bad breaks in exchange for the flexibility of more gears; No helmet for no frostbite; An employee who works with such speed and flexibility at a variety of tasks in 4 or 5hrs, as would require the efforts of 2 or 3 in 6 or 8hrs, but is chronically absurdly late; The overexertion of energetic effort in taking on tasks for an obscenely low wage, in exchange for a supervisor and organization tolerant to and compassionate toward said lateness.
In the end the decisions we make are based upon the principles of most pressing pertinence to our position, in relativity to the weight of our world and those around us. The laws of living by which we are bound, much like those of motion and gravity; the very forces that pull us down, keep us grounded, are too those that keep us going, moving in an orbit of perpetual, yet purposeful poverty and decay. And I for one am proud merely to be but another soft, silent speck burning humbly amidst that infathomable firmament sea.
(Author's note; the amount of time it takes to read this is narrative, is serendipitously roughly the amount of time ti takes me to make this commute)