OMG

Apparently, in the land of text messaging, the letters strung together as 'OMG' means 'Oh my god!', or in other words, 'wow!' or 'goodness gracious!' or 'no way!', etc. depending on how old you are and where you live. Anyway, OMG came to my mind the entire bike ride home today. Wait a sec. Let's do a little recap before the story settles in. I'm in Halifax. That's in the northern hemisphere. It's technically 'winter' even though most people still call this 'fall', including the university folks who call this the 'Fall Semester' until Christmas. OMG, they are wrong. I think the term 'winter' comes at a point when it could snow. And if it could snow, and if it does snow, like it is right now, OMG, then it's technically winter. This is all a side point. Onto the real story: The bike ride home at dusk today was less than nice. First of all, I expected a head wind because I had a wicked-awesome tail wind going into town earlier in the afternoon. Turn around, and that's what you get. Sure, I can deal with a head wind; just buckle down and peddle as hard as you can until you get home. What I didn't expect was the little bits of ice pelting me in the face so hard that I was squinting/ducking away from the snow/ice because it was PAINFUL. Yeeouch.OMG. My face is still recovering now that I'm home. OMG. Oh, but wait, it gets better. So, my gloves were still soaked from the rainy, but speedy cruise down into town, and so on the way home the dampness in my gloves allowed for a greater freezing rate than normal for my fingers. Frozen fingers. "OMG, my fingers are freezing." I almost stopped. Almost. Twice. OMG. I'm putting on winter gloves next time I ride in this weather, that is for sure. And the whole thing, the icing on the cake, is that I was trying to ride fast into this blisteringly strong head wind, not only to get home faster, potentially, but also to try to heat up my core so the possibility of some blood flow to my fingers would be a little greater. In all this extra effort, my head and sinuses began to get clogged with mucous, and at one point I realized that not only did my loogie half stick to the side of my face on its way to the sidewalk, but snot was also dripping down from my nose and sticking to my lips and further down my chin and - OMG - I didn't even know it cuz my face was so cold. Great. I'm wondering if Brian and I should even bother with snow tires for the bikes and just say, "F*** IT" and take the bus. I may say that now, but wait a few days until it's a balmy 6 degrees and I'll be wearing shorts, OMG, just you wait.