"Failure is not an option."
For the record, for anyone outside of the Fayetteville, AR area, we experienced a snowfall like none other for us, literally. 20" of snow that fell at a record breaking pace. It's still falling. I believe that this is the most snow we have ever received at one time. But the daily bike ride must go on. I don't think that there was 20" yet when I finally was ready to give it a go. Maybe only 12-14 inches. Since the snow was so light, I naively thought it would just compress down as I rode, I had no doubts that I would struggle but one way or another I figured I would plow my way through. I made it about twenty feet and decided that this wasn't going to work.
"Look, Ma. No kickstand!"
So, back to the house and I pulled out the truck to lay down some tracks. This would certainly do the trick. I mounted the bicycle again, ready for a ride that would take me back and forth on a stretch of road just under a half mile. "Riding" ended up being a misnomer. Wrestling, might be a better discription of what I did with the bike. I did manage to ride for about fifty feet before coming to a grinding halt. It, again, became obvious that this was not going to work. I mulled over my options. There was going back and forth on my driveway that I spent two hours earlier in the morning shoveling. It was a mere 50-60 feet in length. It seemed that an hour of that would quickly get tiring. I threw out the idea about riding a bike on the bike trainer outside. Carol said, "Sure," but Rachel didn't like that idea. In my heart, neither did I as I did not want an asterik next to the ride on February 9th. 
So, I grabbed the shovel and cleared a larger area in the driveway pad and made a circle around an island of snow at the top of the driveway. Once again, I mounted the bike. Hey, this was working. Maybe some slipping and sliding on the turn-arounds but definitely do-able. I stopped a couple of times to widen the turn-arounds and adjust the curve. About 20 minutes into the ride, I remembered about the sand in the back of the truck and liberally sprinkled the course with two bags. That made a tremendous difference and I easily fell into a groove. My biggest problem was Lupe, the dog, who insisted on standing or lying right in my path. 
As the last ten minutes approached, an excitement grew akin to completing my first century ride. There was a will and there was a way to keep the daily ride going despite a record breaking snowfall. I made sure to ride a full 60 minutes, adding minutes to my ride to make up for stopping to shovel and sprinkle sand. I wanted this ride to be complete. After the ride, I walked off the distance and came up with 330 feet for a lap. Each lap took about 45 seconds accounting for 80 laps in an hour. 330 times 80 equals 26,400 feet which comes to right at 5 miles. Wow. Really? Five miles in a driveway?
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