pre-dawn ice biking

i'm still riding my trek hybrid 7200. rode it yesterday. rode it this morning, at 5:30 AM, before dawn. i can't remember the last time i rode in the dark. temps in the 20s F. i had a blinker on my backpack. and i had an LED headlight strapped on my head, under the helmet. anyway, things went pretty smoothly for the first half of the ride. birds were chirping. cars were sparse. headlamp worked well. ice spots were visible. except for that spot under the big bridge. coming off the bridge the bike path wraps tightly underneath it and it isn't plowed too well. so i cut the corner through the snow, which went fine except i came out onto a black ice patch and totally wiped out. my shoulder is a little sore. but that wasn't the worst part. i got off the patch and got on the bike and started off right into the view of a small skunk ambling down the path. the skunk turned around and started walking away from me. i wanted to be far away from the skunks rear end so i stopped riding. but the skunk figured, "hey, this guy must be friendly" and turned around and started walking back towards me. so i got off the pathway and into the snow to go around it. far around it. but it got scared again and headed back down the direction i needed to go. so i had to outrace a skunk through the snow on my bicycle. and i managed to do that and arrived at work without further incident.
two firsts.
1) pre-dawn ride
2) close skunk encounter

updated thought: God was gracious to me by having me fall down instead of biking right into the skunk...