Dearest Rachel –
Not to brag or anything, but I didn’t expect to be able, let alone willing, to hit the ground running (well, walking uphill really fast, anyway) upon returning from the cruise with Lars. After all, it wasn’t as if I spent any appreciable time in the gym aboard the ship, despite it being much more accessible to me there than here at home. I hardly need to relate how the temperatures here are so much less conducive to heading out, whether first thing in the morning or some time in the mid-afternoon, and getting in the workout I need. It would have made more sense for me to ease into the process, with light but increasingly more intense sessions over time once I got back.
And, to be fair, I actually did eschew a trip to the gym my first day back entirely. I might have made an excuse that I needed to spend the time at the folks’ to catch up on ‘work’ related tasks that got away from me throughout the previous week, but none of those were what could be called high priority, or even urgent. Likewise, the fact that Daniel and I needed to head out early in order to get dinner before the kids’ club meeting (thereby shortening my ‘work’ day) might serve as a reasonable excuse to skip exercise yet again, but regardless of how good or bad it was, it was an excuse and little more. By the time we got back home Monday night and I got ready for bed, I was tipping the scales at (what is by now a rather frightening) two-twenty-two.
So, by Tuesday morning, when I woke up before it was light, I decided I was going to head out. Moreover, upon stepping outside to a fairly windless atmosphere, I determined I could actually walk the seven hundred steps to the gym, despite having read that it was supposed to be only 24ºF outside. That lack of wind makes so much difference, you know.
Granted, by the time I was crossing the parking lot at the office plaza, the wind started to pick up. I wasn’t being blocked by various houses or office buildings anymore, and the wind tearing across that flat and open surface felt like knives on my exposed skin. However, I’d come too far to back down at that point; it would have been a longer trip back to the house to get the car than it would be to just make it to the gym and get on with the day. And so I did, with the added benefit that, on my return trip, that wind was both at my back and actually quite refreshing, after having sweat off some fourteen hundred calories or so.
The same thing happened yesterday morning, although it may have been a little more so in terms of either the cold or the wind. I felt as if I was able to take it that much better; I’d adapted to the cold in the span of less than half a week. It probably didn’t hurt that, despite being below freezing, it was still ten or twenty degrees warmer than it had been when Lars and I had taken off. Sure, it wasn’t Miami Beach up here – “not hardly,” as they would have said on Gobbler’s Knob a few days ago – but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been. And so I could – and did – take it.
So this morning, when I saw that it was 30ºF this morning – just barely below freezing, and significantly warmer than the last couple of days – I thought it wasn’t going to be a problem, either. I’d already dealt with so much worse; I’d be able to make it there again under my own steam. I might want to get started a little earlier, and take it a little easier, since I was planning on meeting Lars today as well, but there was no reason that I couldn’t do as I’d done for the last couple of days, right?
Wrong.
It so happens that, last night, it got warm enough to rain. Or maybe it was snow that melted upon contact with the ground (although, seeing as it’s still not gotten above freezing, that seems unlikely). In any event, upon stepping off the porch, I found myself standing on a sheet of glass. Wet, frozen glass. I could barely make it to the car without wobbling, let alone any further than that.
It was at this point that I realized I’d come to the limits of my adaptation to the cold. It might be warmer than it had been all week (well, maybe just the ‘work’ week, as I think we arrived home to forty degree weather on Sunday), but there were other factors at play here that precluded a safe stroll to the gym this morning. Even the ten yards between the office parking lot and the back alley entrance to the gym was a hazard, as a rain spout had spilled all over the entrance to the place; a staffer greeted me with a warning to watch my step as I approached as she used a hot air blower on the affected area to melt what she could and squeegee it out of the way. Interestingly, she was wearing a jacket to do this, while I was clad in just T-shirt and shorts; I wasn’t the only one having issues with the cold.
Now, they say it’s going to warm up a little further today, which should make today’s walk with Lars a little easier than this. That, and we’ll be a bit more bundled up than I was this morning (along with those nordic walking sticks we use), so we ought to be reasonably safe and warm as we make our way up the trail and back. Still, I wouldn’t mind if you’d keep an eye on us all the same, and wish us luck. We’ll probably still need it.
Letters to Rachel 