A New Year's Commute

Still working on migrating to another site . . . but for now this will have to do. For now, I will regale you with details of my first commute of 2010. Started out on the bike (which evidently makes me Dutch, according to my native officemate), fell off while trying to ride up onto the sidewalk on top of a giant patch of black ice in front of my coffeeshop -- no, not that kind of coffeeshop, you moron -- eliciting large-scale admonishment from the flowershop lady, who ran out to yell at me to be careful! After collecting my coffee, I ditched the bike, figuring that a pedestrian commute would of course be safer than one on only two wheels. Ohh, naivete. I spent the next 40 minutes shuffling to work by alternately impersonating a grandmother and a surfer, sliding down the sidewalk's embankments to the street at every corner and cursing my lack of cleats. When I arrived at work, my first words to my Dutch officemate were, how in the eff am I supposed to get to work?! He very honestly -- after kissing me thrice and wishing me a happy new year -- replied that I was supposed to ride my bike, in the middle of the street, in front of the cars, where the traffic would have worn down the layers of ice. Because it was safer than the sidewalk. Right.