When good months go bad - an angry exposition on March

PFTT! i have to spit the dirty slush liquid out of my mouth again. When will I remember to attach that full-faced soldering mask to my helmet for my March bike rides?

As an eco-friendly business associate to mother earth I make it my business to bike to classes everyday I can. Since i did it almost every day of February i expected things to only get easier - little did i know March was about to rear it's ugly head.

A New York City Blizzard (i.e a foot of snow) hit on Monday. Thinking myself and my bike to be ineffably capable of evading a little snow I was back on my two-wheeled chariot by tuesday morning. As i rode down my first big hill, drops of muddied water exploding like fireworks across my face and neck, i understood the shame of city snow.

A vestige of its fluffy white foundation adorned either side of the road, quickly shrinking away into nothingness and all the while being tainted by the dark evils of city pollution. There is little pride in being a snowfall in the city. A sort of 15 minutes of fame effect where children race from their rooms, gloves snapped to jacket sleeves and scarves flying behind them wildly, trying to catch the rare puritanical whiteness that floats down from the sky. But as quickly as it comes it is gone - erased by an urban heating effect or else serving only to make people aware of the abject filth they co-exist with. The snow becomes that one person in the group photograph whose brilliantly white teeth put the rest of the bunch to shame. We all throw out that photograph or bury it in the pile.

By the time i arrived in my first class I had lost any of my own personal affection towards the white powder. I was filthy from the splatter of my wheels on the street. I looked like a mad chef who had thrown the swamp thing into a blender along with a can of used oil and forgot to put the lid on top. I was an outcast amongst my peers - stripped of my vanity for choosing to do the responsible thing.

By the time i had completed my return trip that night I understood why the snow never seems to stick around for that long. Whether the snow is a great deceiver, like Judas, running from its home with forty pieces of silver or maybe just a misunderstood Shylock fleeing for safety's sake I was left looking down at the vestiges of a slushy, fundament-tainted mound of winter's last laugh and saying: e tu, snowe`?