Cold Comfort

The weather was pretty miserable on the ride home tonight: just above freezing, with a steady, sleety rain; it was dark already by the time I left school; my glasses got all spotty and foggy so I couldn’t see very well and my gloves were so waterlogged that for the last third of the way or so, my hands were wet and freezing, boo-hoo, bicycling commuting is haaard!

I was offered a ride in a car before I left and I’m not sure why I didn’t take it. Stubbornness is part of it, I think, and so is being able to maintain my insufferable holier-that-thou attitude when it comes to getting back and forth from school to home. Instead of fighting the elements—well, just two, really, air and water (earth and fire didn’t give me any problems)—I could have been sitting back in a dry passenger seat and all warm and cozy in relative comfort.

But that made me wonder what “comfort” is anyway. And why is it more comfortable to be reclining on leather seats in a climate-controlled metal box than perching on a leather saddle, pumping your legs, breathing in great gulps of wintery weather, while feeling the bracing sting of tiny sleetballs dot your cheeks and chin?

It was Thoreau, I think, who said something like “life is sweeter closer to the bone,” by which I take it he meant that we lose something valuable when insulate ourselves too much from the world of real experience. And although I like a big comfy bed with lots of pillows and a handy remote for satellite video as much as the next person, I do see his point. Some of the best times I’ve had are when I’ve had the least (or, at least, not too much): a bike, a destination of sorts, a little bit to eat and drink, and in a case like today’s commute, lots of wool, Gore-tex, and shoe covers, too.