The First Day Of Spring!

Well, okay, so I think it was actually the second day of spring, but I biked to work on Monday, and today as well, for the first time in four months. And it was great! I made a couple of mistakes, but that's to be expected, and none of them were particularly dangerous.

The first mistake I made was to take the back lane to the Belt Line, over to Oriole. Both the back lane, and the Belt Line were solid packed snow, which I have never ridden on before. It turns out that as long as you don't want to turn the wheel, riding on packed snow is a lot like riding on gravel, only wetter.

The second mistake I made was to not wear some sort of protective pants. There was a lot of muddy water on the sides of the road, and it went all up my leg, and onto my coat, and shirt (because my coat was unzipped cause I was getting warm), and face. Bleah. I had a change of shirt in my pack, but I had to sit with wet legs until my jeans dried out. Ah, well, lessons for the future, I suppose.

So, what else? Surprisingly, given the snow and general attitude of carefulness I had, I was only 1.5 km/h slower than my previous average. And the big-ass hill at Poplar Plains didn't kill me. Nearly, but not quite. Since I'm going to be out at Richmond and Spadina this evening, I might try a different route home. Up Bathurst to St. Clair, or something. Or maybe not.