"The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco."
Mark Twain ?
Will Rogers?
Edward R. Murrow?
Well, whoever said it was right. And, quoted often. Especially by the shorts-clad, pasty-legged tourists on Pier 39 after a hot, August day spent outside under smog-free blue skies with puffy, white clouds. Only to lose that sun to the clock, see the fog roll in, and feel the damp, chilly wind crawling down their V-neck T-shirts. That's called "night" in the City by the Bay.
Today, I declare that the hottest summer I ever spent is a winter in suburban Denver. The couple pictured above probably lives somewhere in Highlands Ranch. They were sitting pretty yesterday, after a one-foot snowfall and sub-freezing temperatures left decks around the neighborhood looking like the wished-for night before Christmas. But, today, one of those 300 days of sunshine we're famous for came to visit. And, brought a projected high of 76 degrees with it. So, the numbered days of whoever is living in the patio furniture out back are down to mere hours now.
I hear the incessant drip, drip of water off the eaves all around the house. The footprints of DeeDee Dickerson, the border collie, are comingling with rabbit tracks as the melting snow rises from the ground in a mist. Because of our Mile High sun, snow doesn't just melt and run down the street. It does do that. But, it also evaporates into the air. The rapid temperature change from night to day looks like San Francisco ground fog. Except, that it isn't.
If it was thicker, it would remind me of those days I was commuting from the Bay Area to Fresno after my business unit was sold to a British food company. I had planned to do it for as long as it made sense, even though I had an almost-two-year-old at home. The schedule took juggling with Mark, but he had a private practice by that point and worked out of the house. A number of factors finally pushed me to resign earlier than I wanted to. Not the least of which was the tulie fog.
Tulie fog is legendary in California for causing massive piles of cars and trucks up and down the highways that serve the central valley corridor - I-5 and Highway 99, either of which could lead to Fresno from the East Bay. I recall the morning that I could only see to drive by opening my car door and looking for the white line separating my traffic lane from the service lane.
Craziness.
A lot of people put up with that every day during the tulie fog "season," because they have no choice. Their livelihoods depend upon it. But, one day in January, 1994, I decided that my livelihood would need to come from a different direction. My livelihood wasn't worth much if my life was on the line -- the "white line" -- because I couldn't see out the windshield in front of me.
I'm happy to see the sun today. My mood and my health reacted poorly to yesterday's bleak, gray skies and icy roads. I tried to work myself out of it, talk myself out of it, and think my way out of it. My self-pep talks didn't accomplish much.
We were up before the sun this morning, to the same general scenery. But, about 8 o'clock, the sun stopped hitting the snooze button and burned through the clouds to warm our day - literally and figuratively.
That's good, because the world and national news was about as dismal this morning as we've heard. The one bright spot was the price of gas, which I triumphantly purchased for $1.80 after I dropped Meredith off at her school in the dark. Gas wasn't this cheap when we moved to Denver in 2002.
Hope springs.
Maybe Denver isn't big enough to warrant a domestic biological terror attack. Maybe the stock market will stop behaving like a Space Mountain ride. Maybe gas will only be $1.50 by Christmas.
I don't have any control over that. But, I get to put my snowflake sweater away. At least, for one more day.
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