B-r-r-r-r !

Unless you’re limiting yourself to a gym, exercising this time of year takes a bit of toughness. Yesterday, I just wasn’t up for it. The day before I walked 3.07 miles. New Year’s Day I decided that if the marchers in the Rose Bowl Parade could walk 5.5 miles, so could I. I wasn’t giving proper consideration to the difference between them walking in Pasadena and me trying the same thing in the wind-swept plains of NW Oklahoma. It was 25-deg. and gusting to 35mph when I stepped out the back door. I had wrapped myself up with muffs, wool hat, scarf and all the rest of the armor suited for such an undertaking, but I was still surprised when I stepped onto the patio. I told Jean I was going for a walk and would be back in a bit. I walked out the back door and a gust of frigid wind blew through the breezeway and just about spun me around on my heels. It could in no way be called a breeze. I bounded back up the steps and through the door, announcing to Jean that the walk hadn’t taken as long as I thought it would. I could hear her in the other room chuckling.

I decided to look up the wind chill, and was surprised to find that the National Weather Service had changed the wind chill index in 2001. Originally, the wind chill would have been minus 12 degrees yesterday, but with the new tables, it was plus 7. That’s a big difference.

Anyhow, the weather is changeable enough here that today the temperature was back to 39 deg. with a 15mph wind, so I managed to get on the bike for seven miles.    My cheeks were still as rosy as Santa's when I returned, so it was nice to sit down to a steaming bowl of Jean's turkey vegetable soup, the last of our Christmas turkey. I don’t want to feel too sorry for myself, as Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday are to be brutal. Chicago? Man, I feel for them. Monday is to bring them a HIGH of ten below zero.