Cold Night Ride

Irony anyone? I rolled out of bed at eleven minutes to five and scampered to check the thermostat in the hall. 62 degrees. This sucks! It was supposed to be warming up. This place is supposed to be the warmest in the Continental US, not as warm as Hawaii or Puerto Rico but warm nonetheless. I hit the "heat" button and the reverse cycle kicked in. This makes two days in a row we've had the heat on. The good news is the house hasn't been smelling like singed cat and that is because I had the presence of mind to get the a/c unit serviced. Usually when the heat hasn't been run in months, or years, dust accumulates on the heater elements in the ceiling and the smell of burning fur fills the house.

We generally keep the water heater on the "warm" setting but this morning it was totally inadequate and the shower felt cold to the touch. Things were just getting better and better. I was reduced to blowing my wife's hair dryer all over to try to restore circulation.

I call my home a treehouse because the downstairs area is open on all sides between the stilts that support my 770 square-foot home above the flood plain (I hope). This morning the lights illuminated a scene of desolation, dead leaves blowing in the wintry north wind, no newspaper in the driveway yet, and the Bonneville shining coldly in the bright white light. "I have to rest myself there?" I thought to myself, eyeing the cold metal fuel tank butting up to the hard frigid vinyl seat...It just got worse. I was swathed in my gray furry jacket, that and a sweat shirt are my only winter clothing, and on top of that my mesh motorcycle jacket with its shiny padded liner. The outlook for my head wasn't so great as my open face helmet was downstairs with the Bonneville and I couldn't be bothered to clamber back upstairs to find my full-face helmet. I dragged my thick elk skin gloves on and clipped the helmet on my head while the air-cooled parallel twin warmed up.

I've become snug on my Triumph over the past 4300 hundred miles. My hands fall naturally to the grips and my feet go straight to the pegs and my eyeballs line up right above the top of the Parabellum windshield. Its a nice piece of plastic, that windshield, and it does a fine job of keeping the wind off me without producing unwanted wobbles in the track of the motorcycle. The trouble today was that the north wind was cutting diagonally across the Highway and the wind, all 25 miles-an-hour of it, was clinging to my beard and my nose and my eyes, making them stream water down my cheeks.

The wind, sliding round the shield pressed up against my chest and sought out the cracks in my clothing, spreading cold tentacles across my chest and around my neck. My feet were warm inside my boots, and my heavy yellow gloves kept the digits snug but my knees out in the breeze were soon blocks of ice. Its been a long time since my teeth chattered but fifteen minutes from home I was in agony. It was actually a beautiful night. The cold winds had long since blown the cloud cover away and the skies were clear. There wasn't much traffic on the road and i was following the cone of white light through a dark canyon between the mangroves. The temperature gauge showed something around 58 degrees ambient temperature and I was feeling every bit of it.

Halfway into my 40 minute commute I was crying uncle. I was cold, my teeth were chattering and I couldn't feel my knees. The ride, even at a steady 55mph seemed endless. Most mornings I wish the commute could last another twenty or more minutes, I'd like to have left the house early to take in a side road or two, but today, under the constant onslaught of cold air I would gladly fold and stop and suck up coffee, hot and lots of it. Instead the long endless black ribbon of Highway One keeps inexorably unrolling in front of me.

"You could always take the car," my wife said last night with the none too subtle inference that I must be mad as a march hare to ride through the Keys equivalent of a blizzard. "People Up North are snowed in," I said in defence of my madness. "A sixty degree morning would be cause for rejoicing across much of the motorcycling land," I insisted. Maybe so, but I was totally frozen and down to 50mph by the time the street lights of Stock Island hove into view across the Boca Chica bridge. Every traffic light was red, but instead of mumbling, this morning I took advantage and pressed the side of my knees into the cylinder heads one at a time to generate warmth though my uniform trousers.I arrived in the parking lot at the police station like a mobile popsicle and Diggy pulled in right behind me on his Honda 750 Aero. He had a tight woolen cap held on his head by a pair of goggles, his jacket was bulky with stuffing and his 25 year-old face with suffused with excitement. "What a great ride!" he said. I couldn't see his breath on the cold night air but he was radiating pleasure in the cold. "Yeah," I grumbled. "You only rode from Bahama Village," which I didn't need to point out was seven minutes away.

There's supposed to be a warming trend floating in over the weekend, while I'm busy working. Highs are predicted to be around 75 degrees. Neither soon enough, nor warm enough, in my jaundiced opinion.