On the conditions.

It wasn’t so bad, I said, though my fingertips had gone numb in my mittens. There was just one patch of ice, a puddle from the weekend’s rain frozen solid, that I narrowly avoided—a last-minute maneuver to keep from skating to a stop on my bike.

Otherwise, I was flying. At the last light, I took my phone from my pocket and texted, Not dead! just in case you were out there, wondering where I’d been.

It’ll be worse on the way back, you said. True enough, but that was a problem for later. At that moment, I was thawing out. I stashed my coat behind my seat and silently cursed the kids who kept coming through the bar’s front door, letting the cold in. I was doing my best to forget.