In my last blog, I wrote about how much I enjoy cycling in cold, snowy weather.

That night, a brutal cold front swept in, and, after I battled the below-zero windchill for a couple of rides, I considered posting this follow-up: Please disregard anything I wrote about the joys of riding in the cold. I take it all back. It sucks.

Tempted though I was to declare a do-over and trade the bike for the car for a couple of days, I didn’t, and I came to realize it really wasn’t all that bad.

However … I have to admit, riding in the coldest cold isn’t all rainbows and fairy dust, and in the interest of full disclosure, I must point out some of the drawbacks, too.

Frost face. Just after the coldest commute of the season, I happened to pass by a mirror, and I was shocked at the ghoul staring back at me. My eyes drooped, my mouth sagged and my cheeks hung like flaccid meat. Something about the cold tends to make my face look awful (or more awful than normal). I make Droopy look positively chiseled. Fortunately, the effect goes away after a few minutes inside.

Snotcicles. Cold weather makes noses run. Really cold weather makes noses run … then the nose juice refreezes just as soon as it gets just far enough away from the warm(ish) skin. Behold the mucus stalactite. Or stalagmite. Never could tell ’em apart.

Numbness. In response to my last blog, a commenter questioned my manhood for needing so many layers to stay warm. First of all, aside from a number of girls in the Niagara Falls area and my wife, nobody questions my manhood, and then it’s not so much a matter of questioning it as pointing at it, at least metaphorically, and laughing uncontrollably. Second, it’s nearly impossible to keep the dangly bits warm in the most bitter cold. On the bike, the toes and, especially, fingers don’t move enough to generate any heat, and they’re left out in the wind more than any other body part. As a result, they get colder, faster, and by the end of even the shortest commutes the tips tend to lose feeling. Thus, I try to allow myself time to warm up before launching into much typing, lest a blog entry start out like this: jkl;adfs ;lasdfj asdflkjdsfoperzcv., n fdladfsm.zb bxnprslkjfds .c .v.m.

Hat-and-helmet hair. Helmet hair is the curse — or badge — of the bike commuter year-round. The best is going for a ride just out of the shower, and the hair pulled through the vents of the helmet dries into an awesome wave even a perm couldn’t rival. In the winter, though, the helmet goes over a hat, and I spend most of the cold-weather months looking like that guy in “No Country for Old Men.”

Invisibility. I maintain drivers tend to give the crazy old guy on the bike a wider berth in the most brutal cold, but only if they can see. I’m concerned about the slackers who only scrape a pinhole-sized circle in their front windshield and think they can see the road just fine by peering though it. Take the extra five minutes, please, and scrape the whole darn thing. And the back. And sides. Please?

Kraken hands. The last time I gave blood, the tech took a look at one of my hands and asked, “So, you’re a working man, huh?” I responded that I’d never been confused with one, no, but a glance at my dry, cracked hands suggested that maybe I did in fact look like I worked with my hands for a living. And the bad news is, that was a couple of months ago. As the winter wears on, the constant hot-and-cold roller coaster and dry air combine to make my mitts look — and feel — awful.

Still, despite the fact I’m hard to see and even harder to look at, I honestly prefer riding to driving, even in the cold. I’ve never had to scrape the windshield on my bike, I’ve never left it running to warm up in the driveway, and I’ve never, ever generated body heat by driving harder.