Snow+Dumb-Bus=Freezing

My skepticism got the best of me this morning when I woke up to find that it had in fact snowed overnight as promised. During the drive home from the airport yesterday I heard the DJ on the radio indicate that the forecast for Tuesday night included a high chance for snow. I distinctly recall looking at the weather online sometime on Sunday—or maybe Monday—prior to our coming back home; snow was assuredly not in the forecast. That hazy memory coupled with the blue skies and warm day time temperature on Tuesday clearly implied to me that the weather folks assuredly got this one wrong.

Well Mother Nature certainly did not disappoint in both snow as well as making me look a fool! Now we did not get a blizzard or anything like that so there is no point in being overly dramatic. However it did snow and the temperature was in the mid-teens this morning: yhe good ship Indian Summer ran aground somewhere last night and left frosty decay and black ice in its wake. Thankfully after our ‘multi-modal’ day adventures I found myself in possession of 6 one way bus tickets all conveniently with an expiration date of 12/31/09 (I wasn’t aware of that fact at the time I bought them). So with ride coupons to burn I thought, what the heck get on the bus. This proved slightly more difficult than I initially thought; interestingly none of my issues were even remotely bike related. Getting out of the neighborhood was easy enough despite the packed-snow- transformed-into-sheet-of-ice covering the road. In hindsight, given the ease at which I navigated our neighborhood streets, I should have just continued on the rest of the way.

Instead, I opted to hold to true to what I told my wife were my plans and got off the road to wait for the bus. Before I left I checked the bus schedule and swear it said there was a bus due around 7:12 (I arrived promptly at 7:10). After about 20 minutes of standing around in the snow and freezing temperature I began to think I somehow erred in my calculations. Perhaps I read the time for the stop at Wadsworth, which certainly wouldn’t have done me any favors. Perhaps the bus was early and my 7:10 was cutting it too close. Or, the schedule we have is admittedly a year old, and probably needs to go out with the recycling; but really do the routes change that much from year to year? In any case, I was left hanging and freezing. I thought after 20 minutes a bus certainly would be due: guess again genius. Ok, 30 minutes?—getting warmer, figuratively that is, physically I was beyond numb and nearly ready to hop on my bike and race off into traffic to end it all before a couple other fellow bus riders at last started to appear. Shortly thereafter the bus arrived. I didn’t catch the time which might have made a nice little nugget of wisdom to tuck away for another such day where I’m apt to repeat this all over again. The lesson learned from all of this? Get a current schedule? Measure twice freeze briefly? Nope, the lesson is wait 10 minutes and then start peddling otherwise your toes won’t thaw until 9:30am.

Tomorrow it could snow again…and is supposed to be 6 degrees at go-time. I think I’ll be a bit more prepared in case they go 2 for 2.