Yeah, I know – commuting in the winter sucks. And shoveling and hauling kids to the bus stop and winter heating bills and spinouts and having the whole city shut down by blizzards are all trying. I get that.
But given a choice between this reeking, stinking, bug-infested, malarial, allergy-ridden, dripping, moldy, plague-ship weather like we have now, and the crisp, bracing zip of a cool winter day – say, anything above 10 degrees – there is only one sane choice, now, isn’t there?
I’m not talking sloppy, dirty, road-boogery-y, long-overstayed-its-welcome, hacking cough and tickle in the back of the throat on top of cabin-fever-y February weather. I’m talking December, maybe early January, when the pollen is a distant memory and the cold is just a cool, bracing tang in the air.
It’s a scientific fact that, in the long view, most peoples’ memories of winter are like this…
…while to most normal people, the kind of heat wave we’re in now is a lot more like this:
And the household pests! In this kind of weather…:
…versus the winter:
Seriously, it’s hardly a choice.
I think it has to be one of those summer baby/winter baby things. I was born in July, and cold weather hurts me. It’s physically painful. Yeah, it’s too hot right, now, but at least it doesn’t hurt, unless I do something stupid like getting a sunburn.
Damn straight.
I lived in south Florida near Miami where most folks ran AC 24/7/365.25. Where carpeting in houses was uncommon because if you had it you had to be very careful to prevent mold. Where you had to warn visitors to the company to keep away from the holding ponds on the outskirts of the building because of alligators, and to keep away from the central reflecting pond because of snapping turtles. Where the cockroaches were bigger than the kids’ RC cars and often came up the shower drains. Where you mowed the lawn twice a week 48 weeks out of the year. Where you had to do insecticides on the lawn at least weekly. Where fire ants made playing in the yard a risky business and made being stung by a wasp a small trial by comparison.
You can tell how much I miss weather like this. When I lived down there, I often came up to the BWCA over the 4th to vacation. The first few times I listened to the locals complaining about the heat and humidity I laughed out loud since what we’ve got now isn’t unlike south Florida in November except that it was more humid down there.
nerdbert; same way I felt about living in Houston, TX for at least ten months out of the year. At least it did get cold in the winter. The first year we were there, it got down to 18 degrees on December 26. You couldn’t hire a plumber for months afterwards because they were all busy re-plumbing over 40,000 houses and businesses.
Lars may be on to something. I’m not a big fan of winter either, but I’m a December baby and I handle the winter better, too.
What we really need is the period between about Sept. 15 and Oct. 15. That’s the best time to be in Minnesota.
I have household pests (Inlaws) again. Looking forward to fall.
Good ol’ Volcano on the Big Island. Highs in the low sixties in winter, in the low seventies in summer, no ants, no mosquitoes, no cockroaches, no snakes.
Of course we do get 120″ of rain each year. So stay away!
Winter, it’s the most wonderful time of the year!