I thought I was just suffering from a bad case of thin blood because of living in the Southeast for nearly the last 20 years.
I was standing outside with the heaviest parka I’ve worn in years the other night. Actually I think it may be the heaviest coat I’ve ever worn. It wasn’t enough though. Shivering. Uncontrollably. Haven’t done that in a while.
It’s not even so much the cold that will get you here in Chicago. It’s the famed wind.
But you know it’s cold when you start hearing the locals complain about it being cold. And it gets much colder here. Maybe it’s just this is the first real string of cold weather for the season. I mean it was in the 70′s her last week.
I’m reaching into the dark recesses of memories growing up in the Northeast. Layers. I believe that’s the magic formula for making through this week. So I went to a local Target yesterday to get a few more layers.
And the heat in my hotel room has two settings. Heat on and heat off. When I turn it on it seems to keep running indefinitely. I suspect if left alone it would eventually make the room about the temperature of a small sun. I don’t know for sure because I shut it off about the time it reaches sauna in here.
Then the room rapidly cools to icebox. My company offered to move me to another hotel but I can live with icebox. Especially when I can get sauna at the push of a button.
The maintenance guy who came up to look at it told me that’s the way it is supposed to work. I’m not convinced. Maybe if they find a small sun forming on the second floor before I get back here tonight they’ll reconsider and fix it.
Anyway I’m off to finish getting my cold weather bearings here in Chicago today. If you’re anywhere here in the Midwest, try and stay warm.
I don’t know how those folks are getting by with no power.
Hang in there, Chris!
The coldest I’ve ever been in my life was standing on the Metra platform in Fox River Grove in a suit, wingtips, and a topcoat with the air temp (not the wind chill) of -25. Now when the air temp hits 118 here in Phoenix in the summer, I think “this is way more bearable than that cold!”
Mike, I think I still prefer the cold to that kind of heat.
The coldest I’ve ever been was when I was in the Navy. We flew into Burlington VT so our skipper could take care of some legal stuff because his father had passed away right before we were to deploy for 6 months in January. We were supposed to be there for a couple of hours until our plane broke.
Since I was the junior guy I got the honor of standing “fire watch” in front of the plane while they tried and tried to get the engines started. All I had was a light weight flight jacket. Brrr…