Winter Time

It is winter now in the Florida Keys, a season barely discerned compared to many places further North, but here nevertheless. The easy way to figure it out is the fact that I am riding home from my job as the sun is starting to appear over the horizon. That's because four days ago we switched to summer time and moved sunrise from around seven am back to around six in the morning.This change more than anything brings home the fact of winter being upon us. Highway One on the Boca Chica bridge is bathed in that peculiarly gentle light that comes just before the dawn. When I used to spend time at sea on my sailboat I was always anxious to see the first signs of dawn after a night out on the water, the gradually apparent waves in the gray first light were proof that another night watch was in the bag.In the same way for me, the ride home is no longer the night time adventure it was, just last week. I am like a good many people I hear from who would like to see summer time maintained right through the winter but at these latitudes the difference between night and day is very reduced compared to places at higher latitudes. That also means temperatures are much more even throughout the year. Yet blood really does thin and when I leave the police station at six, there is dew covering the Bonneville, and the air does feel cold on my skin even though the temperature gauge shows a hair under 80 degrees (27C). These are the temperatures that residents of the temperate zones consider to be ideal summer weather, low humidity, pleasant sleeping temperatures and so forth. The mosquito activity has plummeted of course, helped along by Mosquito Vector Control trucks buzzing round our neighborhoods, but I for one don't enjoy the lack of humidity so much. My hair feels like straw and my fingernails feel brittle and my joints aren't as lubricated; I miss the very humidity that frightens so many people away from Florida.This is the time of year I enjoyed living on a boat, with the air conditioning turned off, the hatches open to the stars and that cooling breeze funneling into the boat so strongly one needed to sleep under a blanket. At home the tyranny of the closed doors is over for a while. No longer do we have to slide the doors closed behind us lest we let out that precious expensive, dehumidified air.It's the paradox of summer: to enjoy the hot sticky air outdoors but to demand a dry cool atmosphere indoors. There's nothing quite like putting on warm clothes that have been stewing gently in your closet, or picking up a book bearing the deadly speckled dots of fatal fungus disease. Air conditioning solves those issues, and makes for a pleasant refuge, a place to duck into when the heat overwhelms, especially on those rare days when there isn't a breeze blowing across the Keys. This is the out door time of year. Mornings are fresh and cool and the sunrise is welcomed as it illuminates the tops of the trees.For some people, weak people, wussies, this is the time of year to wheel out the motorcycle as the sun is lower on the horizon and has lost some of it's summer strength. My Bonneville doesn't get the luxury of a season of rest. It is under the house always ready to go:18,000 miles (29,000 kilometers) in the last 13 months.