Shall We Talk About the Weather?

In a word, it's obscene.

The east coast snowstorm got us dead eye center. We had a night of heavy blowing snow and a slow warm up such that my garage doors at eleven am still had snow splattered across their face like a seasonal flaky sneeze.

It was heavy snow too and there was a lot of it. Like somebody had dumped all this stuff after first comingling it with so much lead shot.

Two weeks ago I was sitting in shorts and a t shirt ninety miles north of Cuba. We had found a little Cuban place for lunch that was little more than a walled off courtyard with the kitchen in a shack, the bar under a tin awning and gas fired heat lamps that they turned on when the temperature dipped below seventy.

It was a nice find. I look for little ethnic out of the way places like that. Its a testatment to never wanting to be like the old man in the gastronmic sense or any sense for that matter. As long as it came out of a McDonald's bag when things were informal or was served under a shockingly orange Howard Johnson's roof when you had to impress company, well that was just okey dokey with him.

I like a little more adventure in my food so I'll do things like my friend Ian does. He's on a quest to find the cheapest bottle of French wine that's still drinkable. He's down to 80p. I go looking for the shittiest dive that I can still get a reasonably good beer and a burger in without having to dip my toe in Maine.

The Cuban place looked just right and it was just right so two weeks ago I was having a real Bourdain moment, munching on spiced pork shoulder with pickles and a fresh Mojito. Tony's voice was resounding in my head, his quarter octave intonation mine for a few minutes.

"Cuban pork sandwiches and fresh Mojitos. The street traffic has changed from harried parents trying to steer their children away from the racier t shirt shops because they don't want to have "that" discussion yet to newly awoken twenty somethings who, having put last night's carnage and indulgence into the never again remember folder, are aching to test their liver's mettle for a second, or is it a fifth night?"

One week ago I was in Chicago.

It was cold.

Real cold.

So fucking cold that I was afraid to scratch my ear in that it might snap off.

We never drove a distance farther than the car's thermostat just opening and the first sliver of warmth kicking out onto the floorboards.

This week ain't too warm either but my ear's aren't brittle. What this week is however is a snowstorm that turned my morning world whiter than a klavern.

Tomorrow, what back muscles haven't hitched a Greyhound to Santa Fe are going to scream at me most of the day and into the weekend. And its only still January. This was the opening skirmish of the wider war that's still coming.

I wonder how much a pedicab driver's license costs?

Bunny on.