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| From Utility Cycling |
It is undeniably winter now. Or, at least, it feels that way. The winds of yesterday doth blew today. Hey, I'm teaching a Shakespeare play in one of my classes. You have trouble with Shakespeare's language, you say? All right: Ou sont les neiges d'antan?
What made today really strange, though, at least climatically (No, that's not the word you thought it was!), was the fact that the temperature varied almost not at all. It felt that way and the recap I heard of the day's weather said as much: High temp 34 F; Low Temp 30; clouds but no precip; wind speeds from 20 to 30 mph. Not a day fair and excellent, as the Bard would say.
It's time to get myself out of denial. Time to take out the wool gloves, the wool shirts and such. The week I'll spend in Florida will be a mere interlude: the cold will precede and follow it.
At least there hasn't been any sleet or slush yet. I don't mind the cold, and I don't mind precipitation. Both together, though, can make for miserable cycling and can be simply depressing. Fenders and the proper clothing make such conditions endurable, if not enjoyable.
I'm not about to stop riding, though. I never have gone on "winter break" unless I had some health issue or another that prevented me from cycling. That hasn't happened often, and has never kept me off my bike for more than a couple of weeks every winter.
At least winter rides make hot chocolate and soups taste really good!
It is freezing here in Boston and my lungs burned as I cycled today. No snow yet.
ReplyDeleteActually, we've just had a few flurries. I don't have problems with my lungs so much as I do with my nose running and eyes watering. Sometimes my tears have frozen to my face. It makes me think of the part of Dante's Seventh Circle (if I remember correctly) in which the people are in a perpetual state of sorrow, but their tears have frozen and keep their eyes in a permanent gaze.
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