MAR 8, 2010 – 12:00AM

Given the number of times this winter I’ve been kept off the bike by sleet, freezing rain, blizzards, thundersnow, squalls, black ice and general awful conditions associated with the coldest, bleakest, worst winter in my lifetime, I can’t believe I’m saying (or blogging) this, but …

Bring on the rain.

I know, I know.

Finally, conditions are starting to change.

That great, glowing orange orb in the sky — whatchamacallit, um, er, oh yeah, the sun — has blazed away at least for parts of the past couple of days. The temperature has been north of absolute zero for a week or so. Migratory waterfowl are headed back north, delicate greenery is starting to emerge and drunk college kids are able to puke out the windows of moving cars without risking frostbite.

Spring is springing.

Why on Earth, then, would I want to mess with Mother Nature’s mojo and call for even more precip?

Simple.

Sand.

See, all that snow and ice and slush and sleet and freezing rain that piled up over the past couple of months coupled with below-average temperatures turned city streets into scenes from the Sahara.

It’s not uncommon for sand to foul our fair thoroughfares from December through March, but the extreme weather has made it worse than years past.

Most drivers, I’m sure, hardly notice.

But as a regular cyclist, I can’t help but pay heed to the dunes that have taken over my regular commute.

The other day, I had to drop off the house payment at my bank on the way to work, so I took a different route than normal. The trip took me down Ninth Street, and as I approached downtown, I thought to myself, “Self, you get to use the new spiffy-but-short bike lanes.”

Trouble was, I couldn’t find ’em.

They were buried under a quarter-inch of silt.

Most of the streets on my regular commute have some level of sandy detritus.

Some streets are worse than others.

Riding by Holiday Inn the other day on West Second Street, I was squeezed toward the curb by a car. I found myself deep in a wide swath of sand. I encountered a cactus or two, a prairie schooner buried up to its axles, a circle of buzzards and a couple of sun-bleached ox skulls.

Seriously, the stuff stinks.

All that grit gets kicked up and attaches to drivetrains and clothes and eyeballs and teeth. It ruins chains, soils clothes, fouls vision.

And it’s no fun to ride on.

Every sand-covered corner is a test of balance and the limits of adhesion.

So, I say again, bring on the rain.

Not a prolonged monsoon, mind you. Just a quick gullywasher or frog-choker, just enough to wash the sand away and wipe away the last remnants of the worst winter I can recall.

Here’s hoping spring is memorable for better reasons.