flashback to a winter long ago

I used to think it was cold in Kyoto. That might have been due to the fact that my house wasn’t heated, but I think it was also because I rode my bicycle everywhere. The wind rushing down the mountains and along the Kamogawa River blew past me going downhill to downtown, and blew through me on the uphill return home. I learned how to hunker down, to hide behind the people in front of me, and to rotate driving hands.

Having weathered winter bike rides in Japan, I figured it would be simple to maintain the same habit throughout the cold season in Indiana. Sure, it snows here, but I have a mountain bike. Sure, it’s colder, but I have less distance to travel. Of course, that was before the “feels like zero degrees” weather of the last couple of days. Now I realize that riding up and down along the river in Kyoto’s zero degrees Celcius is rather warm compared to humphing up and down hill after hill in below freezing Bloomington.