Bike donating update: or, Old Man Winter dissents

After I posted yesterday's blog about donating the tiny bike, in which I mentioned I might need to borrow a bike rack so I can help collect other people's donated bikes, I got a PM on Twitter from one of the folks at Citizens for Safe Cycling, who said she had a spare rack I could borrow. So I swung by her place this afternoon to get it, threw it in the back of my car, retreated to my parking garage to get out of the snowstorm that was getting up a head of steam outside, and mounted it.

Seemed pretty simple, though I've never used a car rack before. There aren't really any individual cradles on it, so the bikes just sort of rest on the posts (and I think I'll have to lower them one more notch, closer to horizontal), but I think I can pad things out with some old T-shirts to wrap the tubes in, and tie things down with some of my climbing slings and a short chunk of rope, because I know at least how to make things pretty secure using slings and rope.

Test run was supposed to be tonight, when I was going to go to Kanata to get a couple of donated bikes. . .

However. Then this happened.

I didn't think the snow looked that bad, but it took me about half an hour to get from Carleton University to Carling. Yeah, that's about a kilometre and a half. The radio was announcing collisions and pileups and cars in the median all over the city, and said the highway (which I was going to need to take) was at a standstill. So I said screw it, turned around, and inched home, stopping to call the donor and tell her I'd have to reschedule. She sounded a little relieved that she didn't have to worry about me on the roads, and I felt better about not forcing anyone to stand in a snowstorm while we loaded a couple of bikes up on the rack.

So, we'll have to reschedule. The bike donation saga continues!

Meanwhile: Seriously, how do people who drive to work stand it? I almost never have to drive at rush hour, or in bad weather. . . it's hellish. Just that half hour of inching slowly down Bronson, getting annoyed at other people trying to budge in front of me, hitting the gas, hitting the brake, hitting the gas, hitting the brake, popping it in neutral to try and flex my clutch foot, listening to the radio announcing, again, all the roads that were slow or stopped -- if I had to do that every day I'd be a wreck.