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Frigidaire Weather

Even though the weather is an universal ice-breaker as well as the conversation topic of last resort, discussing it with too much portense or passion is viewed as mind-numbingly trite. But days like today are exceptions. When the temperature crests 25 degrees and 50-mile per hour wind blasts Canada in your face, everyone talks about the weather. It’s part therapy, part bragging, and part communal grousing.

The first chilly autumn days are a shock to the body. After 5 months of summer, a 50-degree day feels as painful as inching into a swimming pool. How I dread those first mornings of frost, when the sidewalk is carpeted with wet leaves that have stiffened and cars are left to idle in driveways amid plumes of exhaust. All day I am on the constant cusp of a shiver, as if my skin absorbed the cold and it sits just under the dermis, fighting against the surface warmth of the indoors. (I believe the medical term is “vasoconstriction,” when superficial blood vessels constrict in order to divert heat away from the surface to the center in order to conserve heat).

But gradually I’ll acclimate to the cold to the point where I can enjoy it. This morning I walked the 1.5 miles to the subway in 10-degree sunshine. Cocooned within my thickest winter coat, my longest scarf, my most garish ski hat, and with my stomach full of oatmeal and banana, the cold is as refreshing as a menthol cough drop. I scamper to the subway on the near-empty bikepath, imagining myself ripping and throttling through the snow-covered woods on my XC skis.

So all day I’ve been in love with the cold, and I want to defend against the gripers who act as if the cold has no place in Boston in December. Wusses. If you can’t take the cold, move to San Diego.

Posted in Massachusetts.

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