It was all because of maple syrup and pumpkin pie. The fact that I had to take a physics exam was part of the equation as well. I donned my cycling gear and headed out for a bike ride to Houghton. Being mostly downhill, I arrived at Michigan Tech after an hour and a detour for a Keweenaw Coop sandwich.

I took the exam, ate the sandwich, and redressed to head up the great Houghton hill to the body shop where my Pathfinder was eagerly awaiting repair. I opened the door and grabbed my groceries from last week. I was pretty excited because I was finally going to bring home the much-needed maple syrup and the Thanksgiving pumpkin pie – delicious, Sara Lee frozen paaaaaaiiiiiiiie, as Eric Cartman would say.

I filled my backpack with the groceries. I quickly realized my situation and began laughing as I stared at the Cool Whip peering out at me from the backpack. This whole situation really is funny: car accident -> several days hoping for a loaner vehicle -> preparation for a winter commute -> acquisition of groceries in the body shop parking lot. If you had just suffered my situation, wouldn’t you laugh, too? Maybe it was just a stress laugh, but I couldn’t stifle it. In every perceivably bad situation, there is usually something completely absurd.

Since the ride down was actually quite enjoyable, I thought the ride back up would also be fun. Although, I knew from plenty of summer experiences that the ride back up the Hancock hill was always miserable to a certain degree. Yesterday was no exception.

Like a good, little, commuter cyclist, I opted for the road portion of the bridge as opposed to the sidewalk. It was perfectly fine heading toward Houghton earlier in the day, so I figured it would be fine heading back, and it was…for the most part. The east side of the bridge had puddles of water forming right where I needed to put my bike. I couldn’t really take the lane because I was going pretty slowly – low-pressure mountain bike tires. I tried to ride through the shallow parts of the puddles. My bum still got soaked.

After reaching the Hancock side, I hopped on the sidewalk and took that to downtown. I rode through town and tried to get back on the snowmobile trail, but the heavily-trafficked rail-to-trail was getting slushy – probably also in part from the water being sprayed up by nearby vehicles. I took some side roads up a couple of blocks and got back on the trail. I figured out that I had to get my feet on the peddles while nearly doing a trackstand, and the weight from sitting on the bike allowed me to slowly start pedaling with some tire grip. It worked nicely.

As I climbed the rail-to-trail uphill – it is uphill almost all the way to my house for several miles – big, fluffy snowflakes began to fall in great numbers. I noticed my tire tracks from a couple hours prior had been hidden beneath a fresh layer of snow. It was quickly getting dark and I saw that the hunters were heading out. I needed to get home, fast. The only problem is that I found my speed dwindled considerably with the new conditions. I was going 3.5 mph at one point, and I got a little excited when I hit 4.5 mph. I think I topped out at 6 mph on that trail. It was very difficult, but I just kept pedaling, and I tried to keep it at an enjoyable effort.

I was relieved when I finally got to my road. I stopped, dropped my backpack, and dug out my bottle full of Heed. I was very thirsty and was extremely grateful to begin drinking. As luck would have it, the Heed ran out after a few swallows. I drank a lot more of it than I thought when I was at Tech. That wasn’t exactly what I was going for, but I was almost home and I knew that I would run straight to the sink for a couple glasses of water. I hopped back on the bike and proceeded up my road (yes – up, again).

The ride came to a close shortly after I scared a couple of large deer that were hanging out in my driveway. They were black silhouettes that looked like something out of a decades-old Disney cartoon.

The maple syrup made it just fine. The pumpkin pie, on the other hand, will not live to see another day. It had melted and began oozing within the plastic bag I had the foresight to store it in.

***
Ride stats: 2 hr 45 min; 19+ miles
Weather: 32°F, 11 mph wind, snow

Clothes: Breathable base layer shirt, oversized Nike t-shirt, downhill ski coat; bike shorts, cross country ski pants, baggy Nike pants; thin socks, thick, loose socks, snow boots; bulky winter gloves (for downhill skiing), bandana, neck gator, helmet

I felt very comfortable in these clothes. I did sweat, but never got chilled.