. . .That day, February 10th, 2016, was very much a winter one. The temperature was a toe-chilling 23º Fahrenheit (-5º Celsius) at 6:36 on that Wednesday morning as I wheeled my single-speed bicycle out the back door of our east Charlotte (NC, USA) basement apartment. On the cracked-and-bulging-due-to-unruly-roots asphalt driveway, I reset the trip odometer, turned on the fast-flashing taillight, switched on the slow-pulsing headlamp, fastened my helmet’s chinstrap, and then began my commute to work. A frigid 11 MPH (17.7 km/h) WNW headwind greeted my ski-masked face in the all-quiet-save-for-a-rolling-beer-bottle darkness. Should I just take the car? No, ride for the calorie burn. This is balmy compared to that 7º Fahrenheit [-13.9º Celsius] morning. My 6’-1” (1.85 meters tall), 192-pound (87 kg) frame glided down mostly-still-asleep Kavanaugh Drive. Then my 51-year-old legs pedaled up and over the first knoll in the built-in-the-1960s, mature-treed, lower-to-middle-middle-class. . . Read More