As an interesting experiment I thought I would look back ten years and repost what I was doing then. I am delighted by the outcome. My wife Peggy and I were returning to Frankfort from Arizona. We had spent an extraordinary winter visiting friends and enjoying the magnificent sunshine in the Valley of the Sun.
This was first posted on 24 April 2014.
This morning we left a chilly rainy 65 degree day in the Valley of the Sun. Two hours later we reached the top of a 7500 feet high peak and moved through a snowy white out. The car thermometer dropped to 28 degrees. The weather followed us to our first destination city with two additions, wind, and hail. The wind-chill drove the last spike through my Phoenix warmed heart, ugh. We will follow a major weather pattern across the United States and we might even meet some severe rain storms with possible tornadoes. I don’t need an adventure like this anymore, packing the car was adventure enough.
I often tell friends “in May when I return the weather is colder than the weather I experienced in Phoenix in January.” Another big difference is that in May, Illinois doesn’t have many flowers in bloom, while in January, the valley is abundant in flowers.
Our last week in the Valley had us basking on the patio enjoying 90 degree days. I don’t think I will see another ninety degree day for another three months.
Have you ever gotten in a mood when you have to force yourself to compose something? A BLOG is a diary of sorts, and the word BLOG is an acronym for Weblog. When you own a blog it infers that you write something nearly everyday. There are times when I can post three or four pieces in the same day, and then there are times when I don’t do anything for two weeks. I’m in that zone right now where writing is a royal pain in the keester. On days like this I force my self to begin keying words, sometimes they are just that, words. Not sentences that are put into paragraphs in an attempt to convey information or personal thoughts.
Maybe it is because I just returned from shoveling snow off my driveway and I’m dead tired, but the words, and ideas are stuck somewhere in my cranium. I hate a drive topped with four inches of the white fluffy stuff. My drive has to show concrete not deep, groovy white tire tracks. Most times I test the snow with a shovel to decide if I do it by hand, or if I pull out my handy Honda snow-blower. Today, the blower lost the game and I won the chance to compete with my two shovels. I took my time and spent an hour pushing the stuff around.
When I sit in my sun-room and view the backyard garden covered in snow I see a space of beauty. There is nothing prettier than new fallen snow on trees, shrubs, and lawns. The whiteness of it all conveys a purity of vision and thoughts that can be over-whelming. By tomorrow the back lawn will resemble a school playground with foot prints leading to everywhere. Mostly rabbit and squirrel tracks., but today it is still pristine, smooth, and white.
This morning I slept late even though I went to bed early. My body must be sending me a signal. I lifted the shade next to my bed and saw a winter wonderland. It had snowed during the night and everything is covered in the white fluffy stuff. Oh well, I thought I won’t need a walk today, I’ll substitute shoveling.
I dressed, put on some coffee spiced with cinammon and scoured the fridge for breakfast. I decided my Keto meal would consist of soft boiled eggs, a hunk of Romano cheese, three slices of bacon, and a small cluster of green grapes, yummy. My plan was to eat, dress for outside, and to move snow. I peeked outside and saw a miracle. My entire driveway and the walks in front of the house were absolutely clean, a miracle, or at least a giant good deed by a neighbor. I looked to the left, the neighbor’s walks and drive were still under snow, the same held for the right, but there across the street was a very clean drive and walkways. I spied the remnants of a trail leading from the street toward my drive. It was Tom, he is the angel. Thank you Tom.
Morty Angel on Skye Scooter
That act of mercy left me with more time to kill in front of my computer sitting on my stagnant ass processing KETO into fat instead of using KETO to burn fat.
Yesterday was Friday, and I thought why not treat myself to a home cooked meal? I haven’t cooked in a couple of weeks so I won that debate with myself. The meal would be Chicken Paprikas over one serving of rotini. It turned out delicious and I was pleased. By making rotini I saved the effort of making the usual companion piece of home made egg dumplings called nokedli. Had I made the nokedli I am certain the portion size would have been much larger than that of the rotini. That difference would have kicked me out of ketosis and ruined a week of dieting.
Now it is time to bundle up and take a walk in the fresh clean winter air.
The Lord gave me a huge gift this week-end, He routed the predicted snow storm away from Frankfort. We did have snow, cold, and wind but the inches of snow and ice did not get here. I”m sure somewhere north of us the situation is different. As a kid I loved snow, I couldn’t get enough of it. Snow meant building snow men or snow forts, snowballs, and snowball wars. It meant sledding down hills and rolling off at the bottom. It meant getting so covered in the white stuff that our pants would be frozen stiff from the knees down. It also meant getting sick with sore throats, and fevers. If we were lucky we’d have some frozen ponds and then we could add ice skating to the fun.
As an old man, I love to look at snow, but despise having to go out into it. It means being cold, or getting the car stuck, and of course it means shoveling walks and driveways clear. It means parking a car is harder, and walking through piles of it from the car is a chore. I would much rather be in a warm sunny climate where snow is something that makes the mountain look pretty. One of my not favorite pastimes is shoveling the drive clear after the Village plow comes by cleaning the street and deposits the street snow onto my newly cleared driveway.
I love sitting in my nice warm house looking out at the bird feeder watching the birds as they feed in a frenzy. I also love seeing tracks made by the squirrels, raccoons, and deer. It is rare to see the actual animals but they are there because after a week the back yard looks like a children’s playground with all the tracks they leave.
Photography in the snow is another favorite passion for an old guy. Winter scenes are among the most beautiful on planet Earth, they project peacefulness and purity.
I guess there is a balance between what I like about snow, and what I don’t like about snow, and I am neutral to it, and if I get really tired of it, I’ll pile onto an airplane to fly to a southern climate. The problem with moving to a warmer climate is that my ass is too firmly rooted in Illinois with family and friends. I recall when I spent the winter months in Arizona with Peg experiencing a strange emotion that something was not right in the Valley of the Sun, I missed snow. Now that is crazy isn’t it? I found having endless days of sunshine without dark cloudy, rainy days boring. I did enjoy not having to bundle up to take a walk. I also enjoyed the greenery and the colorful flowers, but deep inside me there was this nagging feeling that I was out of place there.
Then the days began to get warm, I mean hot. By the end of April ninety degree days were the norm and we had an occasional hundred degree day. The greenery began to turn brown, and It was time to come home. In my mind I envisioned greenery, and colorful flowers and warm, not hot, sunny days. We loaded up and drove home, only to find it still cold, still freezing at night, and mountains of snow piled in parking lots. It would be another eight weeks before we hit the hot humid days of an Illinois summer.
All I can say at this point is that living in midwestern USA prepares one for every type of weather experienced on the planet.
Oh the weather outside is frightful
But the fire is so delightful
Since we’ve no place to go
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow . . .
Today, Peg and I sat and watched the snow blowing outside our front window. We commiserated about winters past. My thoughts returned to 1961 the first winter I had as a married man. Barbara and I rented a three room apartment in Chicago on West 87th Street. The front of our house faced the border between Chicago and suburban Hometown, Illinois. We both worked and had long commutes. My drive(11.4 miles)took me to Danly Machine Company in Cicero, Illinois, Barb’s (12,5 miles)took her to the Westside VA (Veterans Affairs) Hospital in Chicago. I spent every dime I had to buy a used Volkswagen, and Barb did the same to buy her Uncle Tony’s 1954 Chrysler New Yorker. The apartment provided parking spaces perpendicular to 87 street which is a CTA(Chicago Transit Authority) commuter route for busses.
Winter snow began in December with regular snowfalls followed by very cold temperatures. It snowed in January, February, March and April too for an accumulation of over 50 inches for the season (avg. Chicago snowfall is 39 inches). What I remember most was digging the cars out after the CTA snow plow pushed the snow off 87 street into a mound behind our cars. It seemed like every morning I’d be exercising by shoveling snow from behind two cars. In the evenings when returning from work we had to turn sharply and gun the car to plow through the mound to get back in. Many times my VW lifted off the ground and I had to shovel snow from under the car to get the wheels back onto the ground.
The joy of owning a Volkswagen to save gas which was selling for under 2o cents per gallon at the time, was the German engineer’s idea of efficiency. VW’s used the air that cooled the engine to heat the car and to defrost the windows. It didn’t take me long to use my knowledge of thermodynamics to conclude that air-cooled engines don’t make it for heating in a Chicago winter. When it is thirty degrees outside and the engine transfers thirty degrees to the air, the passenger compartment gets sixty degree air. When the outside air is zero degrees the engine still puts in thirty degrees, and the driver gets a chilly thirty degree breeze blowing into his face. That winter we had ample days with sub-zero temperatures which meant scrapping ice off the inside of the windshield to see the road. I took a blanket with me to wrap my legs for warmth.
When the temperature dropped below fifteen degrees, I removed the battery from the bug and took it into the house to keep it warm and charged. How did I learn to do that? Trying to start a VW with a six volt system in sub-freezing temperatures is next to impossible. There was not enough power in a cold battery to turn over the engine. I learned another trick from the German mechanics when I complained about the terrible starting situation. “Did you put five weight oil in the engine? No, well no-wonder you have trouble, we always use five weight oil in the winter.” Duhuh.
By the end of that winter I became proficient at dealing with both cars, what worked for the VW also worked for the Chrysler, and we somehow managed to survive.
“Why didn’t you take public transportation,” people would ask? I tried taking busses and the elevated, and learned that waiting for, and riding CTA buses in sub-zero was not fun. Even if I caught the buses without waiting, it took me two and a half hours to make it to work, and that was in an era when the CTA service was better than it is today.
Yes, I sang the song lyrics above while looking at the snow swirling about in a thirty mph wind and recalling the “good old days.” The only thing good about them is that they are old and gone forever.
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