Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings 80* !!
Posted: Sun Oct 24, 2010 1:14 pm
I am such a wuss, there is no escape from it. That whole lap of the northeast from September 30th to October 21st was just holding my breath against the cold. Reliably went into carbohydrate-seeking missile mode. Apple turnover! Cinamon roll! Coffee! Sloth!
I did have some cold nights camping, no doubt about it, where I had to wrap up in a thinsulite blanket inside of the comforter and peel myself in circles like a burrito and carefully design my breathing chimney. For such a whine-baby, why do I love it? There is something about needing your own heat generation, about the mammalian fight to successfully nest against the cold, it is just you and your body, OPEC and Exxon be damned.
I feel the deepest sort of comraderie with the creatures of the wild when I am in that damn cold, when we are all bracing for our hemisphere's cooldown against the void of the Universe, me and the bunnies and the deer and the squirrels and field mice. The stars are telling you something all together different in the winter sky of Vermont than the halycon nights of west Texas . . . that the beautiful night sky is cold, always is, always was. My beloved summer warmth is just the few degrees of rotation spent facing our little dwarf star, and summer is just catching the rays a little more directly. I believe the sun's rays are only 15-20* from due vertical in summer Fredericksburg TX, and closer to friggen frigid 65* from vertical in winter Plattsburgh NY. I sense every degree of angle, believe me. That is why I loved getting back down to Atlanta where the sun is just a few degrees higher in the sky from three days ago, but heck, we gots the 80* warmth today, too!
Yet, all across this land, our time in the dark is increasing rapidly, and that is winter-causing. Night temps in the 30s and 40s all the way down to the Georgia/Tennessee border. Tennessee. A beautiful placement upon the planet:
I disdain the evening:
Evening means only that the cold invades once again, forcing me to put on a shirt! and long pants! then a sweatshirt! with the hoodie! and finally, I don't even want to leave my "house":
In Rome GA, I was parked in the shade and wrapped tight warding off the bite of the cold night and because there was no light coming through the burrito, I slept until 10:30AM. Yes, only you and I know that reference.
How did I wake up and thaw out and loosen up? Why, by rubbing out and polishing and waxing the roof of the BobD, of course. In Dalton Georgia, the home of carpeting. I found a carpet warehouse foundation. Drove along the loading dock so I could reach all the way across the roof. Many motorists along Interstate 75 were treated to the sight I'm afraid, of a little man exercising energetically across this concrete platform against something (my car) that they could not see. Must have looked like some weird performance art.
But you can see what it was about:
Notice that even a nice original bus has weld spatter that sticks up past the laughably thin paint:
The gutters have spot weld divots and crescents of missed paint coverage that will promote the rust thang:
When I was done, I tried to get the reflection in all of its glory, but my camera was confused by the expanse of whitedosity:
Did I mention that I have wrecked the steering of the BobD? That was in Kentucky when the wind prompted me to pull into Annette's Bridal Shop to replace the center pin bushings. Yep. Put in those Turkish Meyle bushings and had a serious major no escape FUBAR . . . . . .
Colin
I did have some cold nights camping, no doubt about it, where I had to wrap up in a thinsulite blanket inside of the comforter and peel myself in circles like a burrito and carefully design my breathing chimney. For such a whine-baby, why do I love it? There is something about needing your own heat generation, about the mammalian fight to successfully nest against the cold, it is just you and your body, OPEC and Exxon be damned.
I feel the deepest sort of comraderie with the creatures of the wild when I am in that damn cold, when we are all bracing for our hemisphere's cooldown against the void of the Universe, me and the bunnies and the deer and the squirrels and field mice. The stars are telling you something all together different in the winter sky of Vermont than the halycon nights of west Texas . . . that the beautiful night sky is cold, always is, always was. My beloved summer warmth is just the few degrees of rotation spent facing our little dwarf star, and summer is just catching the rays a little more directly. I believe the sun's rays are only 15-20* from due vertical in summer Fredericksburg TX, and closer to friggen frigid 65* from vertical in winter Plattsburgh NY. I sense every degree of angle, believe me. That is why I loved getting back down to Atlanta where the sun is just a few degrees higher in the sky from three days ago, but heck, we gots the 80* warmth today, too!
Yet, all across this land, our time in the dark is increasing rapidly, and that is winter-causing. Night temps in the 30s and 40s all the way down to the Georgia/Tennessee border. Tennessee. A beautiful placement upon the planet:
I disdain the evening:
Evening means only that the cold invades once again, forcing me to put on a shirt! and long pants! then a sweatshirt! with the hoodie! and finally, I don't even want to leave my "house":
In Rome GA, I was parked in the shade and wrapped tight warding off the bite of the cold night and because there was no light coming through the burrito, I slept until 10:30AM. Yes, only you and I know that reference.
How did I wake up and thaw out and loosen up? Why, by rubbing out and polishing and waxing the roof of the BobD, of course. In Dalton Georgia, the home of carpeting. I found a carpet warehouse foundation. Drove along the loading dock so I could reach all the way across the roof. Many motorists along Interstate 75 were treated to the sight I'm afraid, of a little man exercising energetically across this concrete platform against something (my car) that they could not see. Must have looked like some weird performance art.
But you can see what it was about:
Notice that even a nice original bus has weld spatter that sticks up past the laughably thin paint:
The gutters have spot weld divots and crescents of missed paint coverage that will promote the rust thang:
When I was done, I tried to get the reflection in all of its glory, but my camera was confused by the expanse of whitedosity:
Did I mention that I have wrecked the steering of the BobD? That was in Kentucky when the wind prompted me to pull into Annette's Bridal Shop to replace the center pin bushings. Yep. Put in those Turkish Meyle bushings and had a serious major no escape FUBAR . . . . . .
Colin
