Okay, enough is enough

... of the bloody snow.

It started to thaw yesterday, but I woke up to see more coming down this morning. Big flakes, and lots of them.
I rode to work this morning on the road because I was late. I wouldn't have been able to make it on the paths. I fell off for the first time in this snow this evening in the Staples car park. I've lost traction and had to put a foot down many times, but I actually went over sideways and landed in the slush today. I've had enough of the snow. One or two days was fine, but this has gone too far. Too much like Manitoba (shudder).
I'm not one of them fair weather cyclists. I'll glady ride in rain, cold, dark, a bit of hail, heat, or whatever, but bikes just aren't made for snow. It might be do-able if you lived somewhere that gets enough snow to justify (do bikes need to be justified?) a purpose-built bike for the snowy conditions, but even then there are so many snowy conditions. The bike has to deal with icy roads, bumpy hardened snow, fresh soft snow, slush, puddles, bumpy ice from frozen slush, snow that started to melt but then froze again and got crust on top. It would have to be single speed as shifters just freeze up when they get wet, flat pedals so your cleats don't get frozen in, disk brakes, because your rims are continually wet when riding in snow, and skinny tires with screws (or studs) in with chains on (or zip ties might work).

Anyway, I'm getting cabin fever. I'm not sleeping as much either (and I don't really sleep much anyway). I did my laundry yesterday and there wasn't one pair of bike shorts in there. I want to ride my bike.

I'm also getting a lot of bike shaped bruises. It's difficult to walk a bike along the sidewalk when the trodden snow is one boot's width. Fire Mountain's got a lot of sharp edges. It's as if every part of the bike was engineered to cause the most pain possible when being jabbed against the body. The brake levers are pointed like a spear, the pedals have a million (each pedal, on each side, approximately) thorns to shred open your leg as you wrestle the bike along the snow banks. There are no bar end cap on the side closest to me, just a rough ended steel handlebar to take an apple core-sized cylinder out of my torso, a rusty chain to eat up my new black cords, a pointy saddle to catch in my coat pocket every three steps, and shifter levers that make there way into by gloves and coat cuffs and get caught in my watch strap.

I started this post last night and can't remember how it was going to end now. Bollocks.