Freakin' Out

For perhaps the third time in half an hour, I am stuck. My rear wheel has dug clean through the snowpack and is spinning on bare ground at the bottom of an axle-deep hole. I am five yards laterally from the perfect traction of the plowed road, but still some ten feet vertically below it, and I am producing a high-pitched banshee howl of rage that cuts clean through the revving of my bike and the