A Pittsburgh Winter

President's Day 2006; I have the weekend off from work (something that should not be taken for granted now that I am in the restaurant business). The plan: a weekend at 5700 Bunkerhill Street, Pittsburgh, PA. The verdict: a wintry winter two days with temperatures barely recording in the teens (Fahrenheit, that is!) giving me a taste of the "coldest weather of my life", to quote Jeff. I must admit it was cold, but to me any temperature falling below the freezing 32 O is too cold (and I thought I had it bad in Portland, OR!! and then in DC. Pittsburgh surely is something else!).

The four hour drive through "flyover country," to use a DC term, was almost uneventful until I took the wheel a couple of hours into the ride. Almost instantaneously the heavens welcomed my driving first with a flurry and then with a full blast snowstorm. For someone who is new to American driving and a virgin snow driver the drop came as an unexpected surprise. I had been driving CRV Mike for a little over a month now but never during the last decade since I got my driver's licence did I face such severe driving conditions. The snow lasted only so long, but the cold lingered on and on. Even now as I sit to jot this down and leave the cold outside I know that when it is time to go home I am going to be put face to face again with the unbeatable force of the chill. And face it I will.

While long johns underneath woollen pants, three top layers and a jacket, a scarf, a hat and a pair of gloves wrapped most of my exterior, my face remained victim to the bites of the wind. The raw cold struck my cheeks and instantaneously infiltrated to my blood and bones. Within seconds my whole body became one glacier on the move.

Is this the coldest I will ever be in? I sure hope so, but chances are I will find myself in circumstances where I have to weather Mother Nature again. In the almost three decades I have been around I moved from one temperature zone that I thought was unbearable to one that actually was more so.

In Lebanon, winter strikes full blast around December. Storms and chill come around the end of the year and into the first couple of new months. The temperature around then: 14O. Celcius, that is.

The next climate zone stop, Oregon. When I was getting ready to move out of the Mediterranean and into the Pacific the answer I consistently got to my “how cold is it” questions was: “not cold.” Only later did I realise that the answer I was getting was relative to where Jeff was living and in no way meant to be a comparison. The actuality I got: cold! Or rather, colder. The temperature: in the 40Os (single Celsius degrees, but still not quite freezing). And I thought that was cold! But cold was neither in Lebanon nor in the Northwest. Cold was waiting for me in the Midwest, and it welcomed me once in the Mid-Atlantic (and that was in April!!!).

Now that I have almost paid my dues to Winter, I suppose the next stop should revere Summer; my Mediterranean blood demands it.