winter preview
There was snow in the forecast for this morning, but it didn't deliver. Instead we just got light misty rain driven hard by, oh, 30 mile-per-hour winds. With water coming from all directions on the morning commute, I definitely felt that I would have preferred the snow. If nothing else I have a little bit of a better chance to keep my mittens dry in the snow. Unlike my last school, where I work now is a thoroughly modern building with heat that comes in from the ceiling or something, rather than from a beautiful piece of ironwork covered with a protective grate that's just the thing for drying sodden hats and mittens.
The other thing we notice with the coming of winter is that drivers are even less aware of cyclists on the road. I suspect it's a sort of cognitive dissonance: they see me, but so little do they expect to encounter a bicycle that their brain fails to process the visual information and they, for example, make not the slightest gesture towards stopping at the crosswalks. Be careful guys, my brakes don't work so well in the rain anymore!