It’s around this time, every year, that I start getting antsy for Winter to end. Someone asked this afternoon, and a friend with the right computer program up and running quickly calculated 52 days (now 51) until Spring begins on March 20, 2004 at 1:49 AM EST (Not that I’m anxious or anything).
As with last year, this has been a gruesome winter. Cold spells have persisted. Snow has been plentiful. Those perennially cheery people who claim to “love the four seasons” have clammed up.
More than anything, for me at least, winter means being housebound. It’s not like I’m a jock or anything, but I like to get out. That’s so difficult to do. It is much easier to wear less when it’s warm than it is to wear more when it’s cold.
I’m not sure what the coldest day of my life has been, but I have a candidate that comes quickly to mind. I was working in Buffalo, hosting PM Magazine/Buffalo. It was the last shoot on the last day before we shut down for Christmas break.
My co-host and I were doing “ins and outs” for a show featuring a story about a “real” M*A*S*H unit. We went to Niagara Falls Airport, stood in front of an Army helicopter, painted in a camouflage khaki green, and did our stuff.
There were a bunch of elements we each had to do, standing outside in the frigid cold. You quickly learn, on the open airport tarmac nothing stops the wind!
After a while, my lips began to malfunction. I know that sounds silly, but it’s the best description of what happened. It got so cold that I could no longer properly shape my lips to form the right sounds.
Recently, one of our reporters at the television station seemed to suffer the same fate while doing a live shot on a brutally cold evening. I felt her pain.
As is often my custom, as the onset of Spring seems reachable, I fantasize about golf. I don’t think about my play – though I’d certainly like that to improve. I think about the first moderately mild days in March, taking my bag from the garage and walking the course. I live 5 minutes from a very pretty public course, where you can play on the cheap and walk if you choose.
How can I not get into shape by walking 18 holes, plus whatever extra distance is added by chasing after my (many) errant shots?
Every year I want to do it. Every year I say I’ll do it… but, I don’t. By the time I get into the swing of things (if I ever do) it’s too late.
So again, this year, I pledge to walk and get fit. I want Spring so bad I can taste it.