Got cold today

So Marty, you rode Bitch back in the day, eh?

Nice job Jimbo! I think you're a little better looking than your brother.

"Are there any more Espar heater users in the SOC bunch out there?"

 

Here is the Espar heater that came on my Beck...haven't had to use it due to the lack of San Diego blizzards, but it's nice to know I can keep warm if needed 

 

19* this AM, which is only 7* colder than the high yesterday... which is great, except it's also the predicted high for today. We're going down to 1* tonight.

 

I've lived here my whole life. It gets cold in the winter. But it isn't winter yet--winter's still 10 days away, and the cold stretches out until early May for sure. Sometimes, it's miserable until June.

 

That's a long, long time. I work outside when I have to, and turned 50 this year. I'm telling you-- the cold will tear you up. I've got poor circulation in several fingers from old work injuries, and a bad back. I get mild to moderate frostbite somewhere on my extremities almost every year. Someday, I'd like to have the sense to move, but my whole life is in this place.

 

I've got some heads in Wyoming, waiting for machine work. I talked to the guy who's doing it Monday, and everything's on hold. He can't get his shop air-compressor started because it's been -20* for two weeks. At least I'm not that guy.

 

Sunbelt guys-- I tip my (stocking) hat to you.

Stan, I'll be at your door with the covered wagon by the weekend, half full so there's room for you and the family and possessions...we can discuss our destination once you get loaded.

The "Dear Leader" of Stanistan wrote: "Someday, I'd like to have the sense to move, but my whole life is in this place."

 

I hear ya.  Thought I had it all down in Beaufort - great, year-round driving weather, great car club, great friends and a terrific home on the river.  

 

Gave all that up to be back near the kids and grand kids, whom we get to see often  up here and never down there.  

 

It is especially acute about now, when the first cold and snow of the season hits and it hurts - especially in my hands, but what'chagonnado?  As far as I know, the kids are never leaving New England so I guess we're here for the duration.

 

Besides........at least we can go out and do stuff during the summer here, as opposed to dashing from AC place to AC place down south in the summer (and it's just getting worse every year).

Rich:

 

Stop by my place after you pick up Stan, and put a hitch on that wagon for a trailer with me, my stuff and my family.

 

I'm thinkin' we establish a Speedsterowners Commune somewhere south of here... way south of here!

 

Stan and I are about 20 miles apart. I was raised in SoCal but have lived everywhere but the south. Perhaps this might be a good time to add some time there to the mix.

Good, Bob, we'll count on you for the map. Sorry I overlooked you in the plans...silly me 

I'm with you guys on the winter cold and dark.  It's only the beginning of December, and I am already wishing for some warm evenings and soft summer breezes.  Sitting on the side porch, having a brew after a nice, long ride in the Speedster would cheer me up right now.

 

Instead, we are inside keeping warm with the wood stoves and the furnace, and hoping for a short season.

 

 

 

It's been below freezing, we have snow on the ground and it will like this or raining and cold until the end of March or early April. If I didn't ski I'd be pretty miserable for 6 months of the year. Maybe we could establish a "winter retreat" somewhere?

Gordon's experience is educational for me.  I retired 2 years ago @ 50 and tried very hard to get my wife & 1-yr old (at the time) to relocate...and failed.  After catching up on my projects, doing some consulting. & contemplating buying a guitar store, I finally returned to work at a much lower level @ Ford.  It's 10 minutes from home, good benefits and decent pay.  I thought if I'm stuck here in the winter, I might as well get paid for it.

I have 2 friends, both older and with no kids at home, who seem to do it right.

One has a place in South Florida & bugs out for 5 months of the year.

The other, just rents January through March in South Florida.

While I have a school-age child, these are not options for me.  That's why I was shooting for year 'round living half-way to Florida.

I still haven't given up.  I'm hoping that these winters will finally wear my wife down.

In the mean time, Carey can perfect Natalie & I can put away some more cash.

Alas, I'm afraid that I may be stuck here too.

If you're retired, live up north, don't have kids at home, & can afford it, I can't imagine not bugging out for a few months.

I personally find shoveling snow in freezing temperatures very invigorating...for about five frigg'n minutes!!!!

Low this morning was upper 30s, with highs the next several days in the mid/upper 50s.  That's pretty much our winter here, with the occasional colder days and a few warmer (top down worthy) days thrown in for good measure.  I can't say I like the summers here, but the winters are great!  I would like to see a little snow once in a while, just for a change of pace.  We rarely get more than flurries.

Yesterday when I went to ride my bike it Oceanside Harbor for 10 miles it was 32 and blowing about 25 cold ,Santa Anna's and I'll be damned if I didn't have to put long sweatpants on. Going back up to Santa Barbara again today got my shorts on again thank God! I wear shorts and a T-shirt 362 days a year.

You are all welcome to come on by....  we have plenty of cold beer,plenty of sun and warm evening breezes.  If you drive down in the speedster...I'll even kick my wife's car out of the garage to give you a nice shady place to park.

 

 

Tom:

If it wasn't for my 13 year old twins doing well at and loving their school, for which we pay an inordinate amount in tuition, my sorry 64 year old butt would be out of here in a split second. 

After next school year my guys will have to change schools and there aren't many good options here for an excellent high school experience. That might be the opportunity to cut and run.

We have visited and done some looking at homes down around Wolfgang, in Destin or Niceville Florida, but my concern is selling our place here. My neighbor's home was on the block for over a year and it is a perfectly maintained, fairly priced gem in a great small development. He took a loss.

 

Bob....weather (except J/J/A/S) and golf are the best atributes for Florida.   High Schools are not on any list of reasons to move here.   When we moved here our girls were just starting or getting to high school age.  It was our biggest concern and even though we moved into a neighborhood with a topp ranked Florida School System..... I still would not recommend it over the school systems in the NE or Mid West.

 

If you decide to move down...let us know and will be glad to share our experiences 

Yeah, same goes for South Carolina - the only decent schools are all private schools.   Otherwise, South Carolina public schools are ranked 48'th out of 50 in the nation.  Pretty sad.  (Puerto Rico, which is not usually included in the ranking, would be ranked somewhere in the 20th percentile.) 

 

But then, the only people moving into the Sun Belt in large numbers are retirees who don't need schools and such and then they suffer the wrath of the Nazis in their "Homeowners Associations" - THE biggest reason why we never bought into a "gated community".

 

When we lived in Beaufort, we got sucked into a politically charged conversation about 2 or 3 times each week, sometimes more.  Since we moved back to New England I have had maybe one of those "conversations" in two years.  hmmmmmmm.........

 

Still, you can't fault the weather in the South (except for their un-Godly hot summers).  I always was able to work in the garage down there right through the Winter.  Just today, here in Massachusetts, I'm able to work on my new, unheated garage layout only for about 30 minutes until my hands hurt too much to continue, so I head back to the house and have a cup of tea.  The snow is pretty and we're expecting 6"-10" more come Saturday, but I haven't really been warm since Columbus Day unless I'm sitting in front of the fireplace with the pups.

BTW:  We eventually figured out that having that second house in South Carolina was costing us about $15,000 per year, once you figured in all of the costs involved, including running back and forth A few times per year.

 

For what it cost us just in property taxes and flood insurance on the second home (the house was about 100 feet from high tide on a tidal estuary), we could rent a place in Florida for three months in the coldest part of the winter.  Doing the math made the decision to be closer to the grandkids a lot easier.

 

Now, I'm just wondering when we'll get around to actually doing that 3-month gig in Florida that I was told about........

Hey Gordon,

When you find that rental in Florida make sure it has a spare bedroom to put up friends that happen to drop in!...ahem

I've got 4 grandkids, and two more on the way. My Mom and Dad are firmly anchored in Tremont. 

 

We're not going anywhere.

Gordy: heater in the garage! $15k should much more than do it.

x2. Good grief. You live in the land of perpetual winter. Heat your garage.

We usually get south for a month or 3 in the winter. We have many friends and family in the "Sun Shine State" that we can visit. They come to visit us in the summer so we don't have to feel guilty about using their homes as a base of operations when the weather chills down.

  It doesn't get as cold, (or hot) here as the rest of New England and it's VERY quiet around here till about May which we really enjoy.  What reaches me is the lack of daylight. The sun sets at about 4:09 and it's very dark by 4:30 and everything is closed till April.  When we stayed in the Florida Keys we were far enough west that we could have been in the Central time zone but were still in the Eastern zone, so it stayed light till about 7.

This Winter we both have ailing parents so we're here feeding the wood stove and catching up on maintenance.  Spring seems like a long way from here . I'm ready now.

Whine anybody ? Red, white...probably some bubbly for the uninitiated.....Sheesh, girls :-)

I spent a week in Ottawa in January (or February?) for a training class back in '96.  My first experience with -20.   The sympathy center in David's brain has frozen over, I'm thinkin'.  

"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy"  Put me in the Whine category

"...feeding the wood stove..."

 

That's my winter occupation.

 

Quick "pick-me-up" thought:

 

When I was managing an Engineering group at Data General, many years ago, I was asked to help out with College Recruiting.  We recruited in October and February each year and sent some of the managers from Hardware and Software engineering to do the interviews. We held a lottery to see who went to which of 9 different colleges.  I got the University of Wisconsin at Madison.  My first trip was in February.

 

As I was walking across campus in my suit, dress shoes and trench coat to get to the conference room and start the interviews, I looked at a time and temperature sign;  7:30am and -20 F degrees with a wind chill making it about -35 F.  Holy Carp!  And that doesn't mention the several feet of snow they had on the Quad.  

 

October wasn't a whole lot better - usually in the upper 30's but early in the season so I was never ready for it.  I recruited there for three years, got some great engineers out of it, but hated the cold.

 

After three years we wanted to get some different people involved and we held another campus lottery and somehow, (I swear these things were not rigged and I should know - I ran it), I got the Engineering school at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez on the western coast of the island.  Someone heard that I spoke Spanish, I guess, and that I could read the road signs.

 

October was lovely...80-ish, Sunny, gentle trade winds, great food, all that stuff.  The drive over the mountains in the center of the island or across the northern coast from San Juan to Mayaguez was spectacular.  I figured out ways to turn the trip into several days and often stayed at Paradors - kinda like a Spanish B&B.

 

February, by contrast, was Monsoon season - 70-ish with rain coming down so hard it hit the ground and then rained UP! (you guys from SE Asia might remember rain like that). Stayed indoors a lot.  Took a week to dry out my suitcase when I got home.  

Always told everyone how awful the weather was so no one else wanted to trade.

Gordon, great story.

There's a reason the SEC is the dominant D1 FB conference- November & December in Big 10 states is miserable, no matter what David says. If some kid can play anywhere, why would he choose someplace where they might need to plow the field before the game.

It was -1* with the everpresent 15 mph wind this AM, and I just got off a roof. I used to think that sounded kind've studly. Now it just sounds painful, no matter what David says.

Yeah, and what the heck is with the NFL, siting the 2014 Super Bowl at Met Stadium in, what? - - New Jersey?  I think they should just keep it down South.  I really LIKE the "Super Dome".

 

Actually, my two sons and I are looking forward to this Super Bowl.  We'll be watching in the ESPN lounge/TRON room on the Disney Dream, heading for Nassau!