Let's get one thing straight -- I don't like bicycle commuting in winter. I don't like bicycle commuting at all, but given the choices for getting myself to work, it's the lesser of several evils. Driving a car into Cambridge is a fate worse than death, and life is definitely too short to commute from my house by public transportation. This would involve a bit of cycling anyway to even get to a T-stop, and by the time I'm all dressed up and already stinky, I might as well just keep on going rather than inflicting myself on my fellow passengers. But winter ups the ante with dark, cold, snow and ice. This presents the ever present danger of FDGB (fall down, go boom). Maneuvering the slippery stuff with two wheels requires a degree of skill I don't posssess, and I can't remember a winter when I didn't become one with the pavement at some point, usually several.
The nice thing about my present job is that it's easy for me to work at home. I have vowed that being the veteran of countless FDGB of yore, at the slightest hint of snow I was staying home. But I really don't want to abuse the privilege, so I plan to stay home only when it's clearly foolish for me to do otherwise.
Unfortunately, this is not always a black and white decision. Case in point, a while ago, the weatherpeople started talking about maybe some snow. By the end of the evening they had whipped themselves into a forecasting frenzy, predicting the next thing to the blizzard of '78. So I was ready to hunker down and work at home. I got up at the usual time expecting to see mounds of snow in the driveway. Actually, there was no snow at all. So I figured I'd go in, at least for a little while. First snowflake, I'm outta there.
Next was the choice of bike. I was thinking of taking the road bike, but the voice of reason was saying, "bozo, later today, you'll be waist deep in snow, you really don't want a road bike for that." So I took the mountain bike, reasoning that if I left before the snow got too deep, it'd be fine. Actually I was somewhat looking forward to cruising home on the bike path with an inch or two of new snow. I'd stay until noon, anyway, come what may, and then find my way home on my trusty fat tire bike.
OF course, perhaps even worse than riding skinny tires in snow is riding a mountain bike on dry pavement. Which is what I ended up doing since there was in fact NO snow at all. So there was a lot of whining on the way home, since the old mountain bike is a LOT more work than the road bike. At least I hadn't mounted the studded front tire yet, that would really have not been fun.
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