Of Course!

It felt Friday around here as if Winter has started to arrive. We had just about every kind of weather you can have all in the same day (Tony would have appreciated the idea, I'm sure, but, perhaps wondered a bit about the zealousness of our execution). By late afternoon we had rather ferocious winds sweeping across the region from Bar Harbor to Cape Hatteras with some unkind gusts thrown in for good measure.

When I got up yesterday morning it was about twelve degrees Fahrenheit cooler than it had been on Friday. So crisp, in fact, that the weather station our son got us a decade ago with outside monitors that transmit their readings wirelessly to the collection station were on strike. All I could read for temperature was "--.--" which is Radio Shack weather station code for 'get your butt out on the porch and see for yourself." I enjoy the notion the temperature readout offers decimals on every degree as if 28.1 feels warmer than 27.9.

I don't mind winter's arrival because there's not much I can do about  it (pouting, while therapeutic, changes nothing) and I figure we got away, so far, with about five more weeks of Autumn than we usually have, so it's all good. Out for a morning walk I was reassured at my own mortality because I could see my breath with every stride and I had the sidewalks to myself around Chelsea Parade and Washington Street (allowing  the cars on Washington to stay where they belong and I'll do likewise).

Coming towards me, and making me shiver just to look at him was a man with black baggy shorts and a dark (not Navy) blue tee shirt with some kind of  writing on the shirt. He wasn't running but he was power walking at a pretty good rate. As he neared I could see his footwear was a set of those new (to me) sneakers that are like having a second skin and, say devotees, make you feel like you're running barefoot. Considering the number and texture of surprises lurking in the grass throughout Chelsea Parade, I'm not sure how much of the attractiveness of  barefooting argument I'm buying.

As we briefly met and then passed one another, I saw the lettering on his tee-shirt, "University of Alaska Track and Field." Proving again there's no place like Nome. Well-played, sir!
-bill kenny