Relief, finally!
Today we rose to an absolutey tropical -13c. The past few days commuting have been tough. Yesterday morning on my way in, the thermometer read -29c, the wind was light, so it ONLY translated to a windchill of -39c. Still haven't broken my personal best of -39c windchill, -31c ambient air temp yet, but the way this winter has started (it is winter, right?), I should easily cruise past that number by February.
On the ride home yesterday, I had an interesting experience. On the climb up from the river valley in Edworthy Park, I had to remove my goggles due to severe fogging/frosting. As soon as I lifted them, my eyes started to well up. Well in -25c (the high for the day), tears don't stay tears for much longer than a nanosecond before turning into eyesicles (nice pun, eh?). I was continuosly blinking to try and ward off the dreaded eyelid freezing that I had been warned about. By the time I got to the top of the hill, it took considerable effort to open my right eye.
I had planned to get photographic evidence of this phenomenon, but once I got home, my toes started to thaw out, which left me in considerable pain. Couple this with two extremely excited dogs licking my face, means I didn't get up from the floor until well after my eyelids had thawed out.
Today I woke up with a sore throat and decided that it might be a good idea to take a day off from riding and get over this before it turns into something worse. I immediately figured out why I don't drive. Maria and I got stuck in traffic going down 17th ave. and found out that the cause of our (okay my) frustration was a three car accident that left two cars sitting on someone's front porch!
The bus ride home was even more painful. Nowadays, every bus/train in Calgary is packed to the gills due to the crazy boom. Not only was I squeezed uncomfortably next some girl, old man, and large dude, but the girl was, I'm pretty sure, auditioning for an auctioneer job on her mobile. It went something like this:
"yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda.....shuuuuuutttt UP!
yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda......soooo like nooooo way!
yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda......Mark is soooooo cuuuute......shuuuuuttt UP!"
It left me longing for frozen eyelids....
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