Blowing & Drifting

The last couple days of biking have been really cold, with wind chills of minus 4 F in the morning and the afternoon. Minus four, I learned yesterday, is cold enough to freeze the little plastic gate in the mouth of my bike lock; I had to break it and chip it out of my lock with a penknife. (Not quite having a stalled car with a hungry infant, but we all bear our crosses). Minus four was also cold enough to freeze the banana peel that's been lying in Prairie Street for weeks. When I rode over it yesterday morning, it shattered like a lightbulb - sorta the reverse of the high-school physics experiment where you use a frozen banana as a hammer.