T'was the night before the night before

I expect this time of year to get cold and snowy but not so quickly, at such a grand scale.  This seems very different than the winters and seasonal changes of my youth; I recall a more gradual transition as summer fell into winter.  Maybe it's the Mandela Effect, the false recollections we often share.  And I read that next week we'll have temperatures in the 50s in the Chicago area.  Those sudden shifts in temperature must be hell on the infrastructure with all that steel contracting so quickly.  No word of water pipes bursting yet but I think that requires a prolonged and very cold spell.  Any sign of freezing on the Chicago River, Uncle Ken?

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Did a little shopping with my sister the other day, trying to figure out what to get her kids.  Did I say kids?  They're in their mid-30s, getting long in the tooth to be considered kids, I think.  No gift exchanging for the "adults" as we like to think of ourselves. We both agree that the Holiday Season (TM) isn't much fun unless there are young children around, less than eight or nine years old.  Yes, there is all that Santa Claus malarkey to deal with but the unbridled joy and anticipation that the children have is contagious and makes everyone is little less cranky, if not outright happy.  Some kinds of self-deception have a positive net effect, I think.

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Yes, indeed; the days are ever so slowly getting longer.  A minute here, a minute there, and it all adds up.  I did a little digging of my own and found out that we will be closest to the sun from January 3rd to 5th at a paltry 91.403 million miles.  And right now the sun is at its lowest height in the sky at 25 degrees of elevation at the meridian (high noon).  After January 4th it will start creeping upward to its highest point of elevation in June at 72 degrees.  Those figures are for Chicago; they will be very different in Beaglesonia.  By how much, I don't know.

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Mr. Beagle's tale of winter driving reminded me of a cold weather adventure of my own, maybe there is something in the DNA that brings out a little craziness as the temperature drops.

In the late 70s I was active in the Chicago Region BMW motorcycle group and they had some organized rides a couple of times during the year.  These weren't the rides you see in the movies with everyone puttering along in well ordered ranks with the Big Cheese at the lead.  The way we did it was we started from here and we ended up there; how you got there was your own business, whatever was in your comfort zone.  Ride alone, ride with a couple of pals, take whatever route you wanted.  The destination was always a restaurant or roadhouse with good food and plenty of beer, and a good time was usually had by all.

One of those rides was called the Frostbite Ride, and we even got a little snowflake patch to commemorate our participation.  It was in December between Thanksgiving and Christmas and it worked out fine, there not being much snow most of the time.  The year I went with my future ex-wife was a ride down to Kankakee, a bit more than 60 miles I think, not a terrible long ride.  But the high temperature that Sunday was 15F.  Frostbite Ride, indeed!  No windshield, no fairing, but good snowmobile suits, mittens, and boots did the trick and we didn't freeze to death.  You can get a little loopy during a ride like that but it was kind of fun, in retrospect.  I went on a couple of more Frostbite Rides but that one was the coldest, and furthest.  Would I do it again?  Hell yes, if the road was clear.

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Happy Xmas, all.