#420 Bone Chilling

I’m glad that cold spell is over. I confess, it got so cold I wanted a warm embrace from anything, even the whole concept of global warming. Personally, I stand to benefit, as the total melting of the ice caps in Antarctica and Greenland will make the ocean rise to such an extent that my home will be beachfront property. And the homeless problem downtown will be solved. Of course there won’t be a downtown, except in an extended Venice-like sense. I can see it now— Gondolas plying the waters of Fourth Avenue between the State Theatre and the Security Building. Talk about cultural appeal. And voila, the parking problem is solved once and for all. No cars.
In any event, the cold was too cold for my un-insulated bones. I mean, at one point it was so cold my nipples were hard enough to scratch glass. And driving down the icy freeway was murder. I was talking to my girlfriend on my phone and all of a sudden—jack-knifed semi. I’m here to tell you, jack-knifed semis make it hard to drive. It gets us every time. Light snow and then freeze. I heard a few out-of-staters, mid-westerners, chiding us about closing schools and whatnot just because we had an inch of snow. But this was one of those times that an inch does make a big difference. Because that inch got compacted quickly and unlike fifteen inches, when you know what you’re in for and can adjust accordingly, with studs, chains, or whatever, 1 inch puts you in the danger zone of slight melting next to the surface, which creates a super-frictionless interface. Add to that four-wheel drive but not four-wheel stop slippage, bald tires and crazy yahoos who think they can broadie their way to work caroming off the sides of school busses, and really, it is more dangerous. So it was a good idea to delay schools opening a couple of hours to let the idiots sort themselves out in the ditch. But it was cold. That northern wind would kick up and blow across the 3-inch drifts and man, my hands would freeze their Western Washington webs together. You know it’s cold when you use the tiny LCD screen on your cellphone to warm up your hands. Just that teensy bit of electronic nano-warmth is a blessing. And you pray for a call, so you can get the vibrator thingy to shake a little bit of blood back into your far extremities. And when you take the call you can put the slighter warmer phone to your frostbitten ear. It’s a shame long hair isn’t in fashion this winter. Although with my middle-aged wispiness there’s not much in the way of insulating capabilities left. And worse, if I were to wear a knit cap, instant hat hair. But still, there’s nothing like the look of everything after the first snowfall. So clean and white and new. You fall in love with the world all over again. Even if, after dealing with a jack-knifed semi, then slipping and sliding, and a bone-chilling brush with a little death, you see it from the bottom of a ditch.
America, ya gotta love it.