All About the Weather

Saturday, January 23, 2016

Not your typical South Florida day. Chilly. Very windy. A lot like the first days of our travel down in the Scamp last year. Where we camped, up in the “Big Bend”, near the waters of the Gulf it was very cool and breezy and I wore blue jeans and a fleece and a hat all the time. The first morning I went into the water for a swim it was on a dare made by Kim Walker Stanberry. As proof of my daring Elisabeth snapped my photo standing on the cold wet, white sand dressed only in my bathing suit. I was posed a-la Charles Atlas, pumping my deltoid muscles, unshaven and slyly smiling. Looking at it later I realized that I had been channeling my hero, Jack Beers (for more on the ageless Jack Beers look here). My old-aged-flesh barely responding to my muscle’s urging, I look old and saggy, but proud and mischievous. The next few frames were of me running down into the smooth, clear water until I finally disappeared into the depths, my arms flapping like the wings of a brown pelican as I splashed down. It was cold.



But cold is a relative thing. Cold down here in the crook between the Loxahatchee river and the intercoastal waterway is 50 degrees accompanied by the smell of salt and mangroves on a stiff northwesterly breeze. Back up in Peekskill cold is a dry minus 2 pushing its way up the Hudson on a howling wind so loud that it eclipses the rumble of the mile-long freight trains chugging along the banks of the river. Cold is the chatter of your teeth waiting for the bus on Fifth and 42nd street at 6:45am. It is the cold plastic seat of an unheated car on the “J” train at midnight rumbling through Brooklyn. It is a motorcycle traveling against the wind on Route 17 (the “Quickway”) on Sunday morning-60 mph, all the clothing you can possibly wear, heated grips and still shivering like a wet hound...



I never like to talk about the weather when I call friends and family back “home”. It is the last topic of discussion they want to hear about. My father used to call me from his home in Miami and the first thing he would ask was “What’s the weather like up there?” Naturally, I would down play the actual state of my frozen environment-”Fine,” I’d say, “a little cool and some snow, but OK.” That was how I described minus 2 and 30 inches of drifting, wind-driven, white-out snow. He would gloat, “Oh, its about 75 here. The sun is very strong. I’m staying inside (watching John Wayne movies on AMC, no doubt!). I was watching the weather and saw they have some Winter weather advisories for New York...I was concerned that you were alright?” “We’re fine,” I’d say, “No problem.” Once he’d inflicted his damage I would spend the rest of the day vacillating between envy-dreaming of the warmth of the sand and a sun of a Florida beach- and hatred of my own rotten choice of where I’d chosen to live and my father-for bringing it all into focus for me on a weekly basis. So now, when I call friends up north I am careful never to be the one to bring up the weather. If asked I will give a bare-bones, unadorned statement of the temperature and nothing more. If pushed I will try to move the discussion to another subject. Further embellishment will only alienate my friends and family so I steer clear. I am weather adverse. I want to keep my friends.