Yes, it was cold this morning.
Very freakin’ cold.
Thanks to the black ice, the gray ice, and the old-school silver ice, I left the bike in the garage this morning and set out on foot.
I try to allow myself 15 minutes on a typical walking day, and hoped to give myself a few minutes extra today to negotiate the ice, the frozen drifts generated by snow plows, the (surely) unpaved sidewalks.
Alas, it didn’t happen, and I set out with just about 15 minutes to go before the 8:43 pulled in.
My luck turned just a moment later, as the lady from the house cattycorner to us yelled out to me. She’s a quiet lady and her husband’s a decent guy, if a bit cranky in that old no-nonsense Bronx kind of way. They have a dog that’s not friendly and doesn’t like women. We invited them to Little Miss C’s christening party in the summer and they were perfectly pleasant.
The lady was going to the post office, which is 9-10ths of the way to the train, and asked if I wanted a ride. Manna from heaven, I thought as I made my way up their driveway. [Editor's Note: Our house looks really cute from that angle, an angle I hadn't seen before. Especially in the snow.]
She turned the key in her old Cadillac once. No go.
Twice. A pneumatic cough and a sputter.
Thrice. Four seconds of engine hum and then sputter.
Four times. You know where this is going.
“Sorry,” she said.
“Thanks anyway,” I said, lamenting not only the frigid walk to the train but the two minutes I’d just lost in this exchange.
I set out jogging. The running warmed me a bit. Indeed, one stretch of sidewalk that fronts a veterans memorial was cleared of snow; the rest of the time, one was forced to walk in traffic, which was light.
I made the train with a minute to spare. But I was hardly free from the tundra-esque conditions, as a thin layer of snow was on the floor of the train car. No, not the cotton-y fake snow in mall displays this time of year. Actual snow; presumably the door had been left open during the weekend’s blizzard.
If a little snow on your train floor doesn’t get you in the mood for the holidays, you have a heart the size of the Grinch’s.