Drive? Bike? Crash? Fall? Ice.

The roads today are the worst that I've ever seen them here. The rain and snow that fell on the weekend have frozen solid, and the city didn't act fast enough to get the stuff off of the roads, so it is like an ice rink on most the roads, even the big ones. A section I drove on this morning was actually like driving on Disney's Autopia on ice. I would have slid to the kerb if the big rail of ice between the wheels had not been keeping me headed in the right direction. There was ice in the ruts and everywhere else. People were sliding all over the place, and I had trouble directing the car in the right direction on several occasions (this should be figuring into car selection, I know). In the end I made it home without incident, but decided that I didn't want to deal with the conditions and traffic on the way home, so I decided to bike into the office.
It was around zero degrees as I headed in this morning, and conditions were better suited for crampons than biking. Ice was forzen in the shape of footprints and tire treads betweeen a trace and up to one inch thick on the roads and paths. In most places the ice had some snow, which gave it a bit of grip and texture. On one stretch of road the snow was like heavy sand, and a bit greasy-feeling, making riding in a straight line difficult. The ride in was not too bad, overall.
The ride home was a different story. In many places the ice had been heated by the sun, melting the surface and eliminating the texture that had been there in the morning. There were many more places with smooth, slippery ice, and it was a much more nervous ride on the way home. It will be several days before the roads are better. It will be Thursday or Friday before the temperature rises above the magical 15-degree mark where salt will be able to melt the ice and make the roads grippier. The normal high temperature for today is 32 degrees. Today we reached 6.
No crashes or falls took place for me.