Crossing the Potomac on an Icy Morning

The air on this morning’s commute stung my cheeks. Tears fell from my eyes like hard little diamonds, bumping down my face to clatter on the road.

It felt electric. Bracing!

I navigated the twilight with caution, skittish deer and crepuscular foxes threatening to spill me on the asphalt. I’ll take morning drivers over evening drivers, but the sun hits at a hard little angle this time of year to blind even the wide-eyed coffee jock. Temps like this mean ice and hitting ice means a skidding drop.

Far from loathsome, I found magic in the chill, and the magic felt transformative, wakeful. Crossing the Chain Bridge over the Potomac, I grieved for them behind the wheel, stalled behind brake lights behind brake lights behind ever more brake lights.

With the right departure time, my commute to DC could be twenty minutes by car on the George Washington Parkway, or forty by bike along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, the old C&O Towpath. The price for driving: $17 to park. The price for riding – 24 degrees.

One more thing on the price calculation. Punching my top speed into NOAA’s wind chill calculator, I learned I was riding through 9 degrees. So I wrapped up in a wool hat, ski mask, padded gloves, five layers on my torso, two on my legs, and wool socks under my boots.

I chose the towpath.

One morning last winter, a dark and wet morning with heavy, dying flakes, a police cruiser in Rte. 123’s left lane marked the spot where not one, not two, more than three cars had lost a tire in a weeping pothole. The day for those travelers was wrecked, and probably more than a rim or axle or two. I’d also driven to work, precipitation unfriendly for cycling, and missed the curse. But not in any strategic way. Just dumb luck.

Biking to work through the worst cold of winter can feel like magic. It saves me from the madness of crowded lanes, nasty potholes, and precise departures. Every now and then I brave the cold and get to see the ice, just beginning to skin up on the surface of the old canal, a waterway connecting Georgetown in DC with Cumberland, MD, almost 200 miles away.

It was a cold morning, but a good one.

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