I commuted by bicycle today, although maybe I shouldn't have. There was a forecast of snow for today, but the big amount of snow was estimated to start after 5 PM, so I though I would have good time to get home before that. But it started snowing in earnest already after 2 PM...
And it wasn't so easy in the morning either. Well, most of the way was quite good, 1-3 cm of snow on top of hard and relatively even surface. But then there were parts which were bad, in places really bad, 5-10 cm of wet snow and snow slush.
The worst bits were those where the road was covered by hard packed snow but some of it had partway melted so that the ride was a rollercoaster, especially the sideways slips. Well, after a while I got used to this and could even relax a bit while riding the bicycle. However, at one point I relaxed a bit too much and run into a roadside pile of snow, but that was ok, snow was soft.
However, when returning home I ran into additional difficulties, as snow was sticking to the bicycle and there was so much of it that it started to hinder the tires from turning. Brakes were not working properly either, but that wasn't a problem as I was riding so slowly in any case.
At one point I debated whether I should walk and push the bicycle, riding was so slow. Some people did that, and at one place there were three people pushing their bicycles one after another.
However, there were exceptions as well. In a road crossing, waiting for the traffic light to turn green, I watched how on the other side a guy on a bicycle was riding around in tight circles in 5-10 cm of snow slush. Apparently he didn't want to put his feet down and stop, so he rode in circles.
It took 70 minutes to commute to work, and 80 minutes to get back home, both are new records. And at home I had to do some snow shoveling, making the total amount of exercise for today almost three hours. A bit too much for one day...
I didn't take any photographs today, but here is one from yesterday. I try to avoid logos and company names in my photographs, but this was an intentional exception, as I recently stopped being a customer of this particular bank. I have been a customer since I was less than 10 years old. At that time the bank was called Postipankki, which turned into Leonia, which turned into Sampo-pankki, which turned into Danske Bank.
In fact I switched banks about 15 years ago already, when needing a loan and another bank made a better offer. But I still was a customer at Danske Bank. When I switched most of my banking elsewhere I got a big revelation on how well their web-based banking system worked compared to Danske Bank. It was (and is) a pleasure to use.
The Danske Bank's impossible web interface was the last straw. They are using Java (not the same as Javascript), and this has caused problems one after another. So, a week ago I cut the last straw as I couldn't stand the situation any more, it was a nightmare to try to do anything with their Java application. Farewell!
(Posting title is from the poem The Boundary by Bei Dao, translated by Bonnie S. McDougall.)
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