Weather and time

Just as November can break out during any month of what we used to think of as winter, so can Sunday break out during any day of the week.

Sunday is absolutely the most tedious day of the work week. A busy spell on any other day will move the clock forward miraculously, bringing lunch time or quitting time pleasantly quickly. The same level of activity on a Sunday ends with the clock hands frozen where they started. Through this fall and winter, Sunday's time has spread to the other days. The silence is deeper. The sense of abandonment more complete. The desperate feeling of being in some absurdist hell settles like a weight on the chest.

It seems funny to talk about attacks of November when we're locked into a week of subzero nights and bitter, breezy days, but the National Weather Service forecast calls for a warmup to the 40s by next Wednesday, with rain showers. This is the new climate: if it gets cold at all it gets ridiculously cold. Storm fronts bounce off the frigid dome of high pressure, dumping their bounty on places that would prefer to do without it and then blundering out over the ocean. The wind shifts behind the front and drags a moist southerly flow over us. The first bit of precip might fall as something frozen, but the temperature keeps rising.

Longtime residents of the area all said you never get two skimpy winters in a row. I didn't bother to remind them of 1991 and 1992. I should check my notes. As meager as those winters were, they may not have been as bad as the last one and the one we're in. And a few others have only been one snowfall away from being epic disasters as well.

This puts the cross-training cyclist in a tough spot. I don't have much enthusiasm for a dawn patrol on icy roads at 6 degrees below zero, which was this morning's temperature. My previous winter stand-bys, cross-country skiing and hiking, suffer from a lack of snow on one hand and a lack of time on the other. With good snow and somewhat normal winter temperatures I would ski around the woods at home with a headlamp just for a little something.

It's indoor training, running or nothing. I'm cool with nothing. Reading, writing, bludgeoning the fiddle, maybe some drawing, not to mention sitting around under a cat all seem worthwhile enough as long as I move around a little during any given day. As bike season seems like more of a possibility in a week or a month the more focused training will seem more like it's worth the trouble.