Everyone in Gainesville, and many of you elsewhere, will have heard about the terrible disaster out on Interstate 75 in Paynes Prairie. The news reports are awful enough, and the photographs of the aftermath are more than one can bear. I’ve driven that stretch of highway more times than I can count. On a clear day it’s frightening enough—since the volume of traffic is so heavy, and many drivers travel at speeds upwards of ninety miles-per-hour—but on a day with heavy fog or smoke the road is a death race. Let us all be full of care and drive safely, and God help the loved ones of the poor victims of this catastrophe.
All of my friends in northern climes will forgive the boast, but at this moment—eleven o’clock in the evening on 25 January—the current Gainesville temperature is sixty-seven degrees. This afternoon it reached eighty degrees, and yesterday it was eighty-three. On my bike rides I have been sweating something fierce, and today I noticed that the swimming pool next to my old apartment building had quite a crowd. This entire winter, in fact, has been surprisingly warm. I welcome it. Two years ago at this time we were having the worst January of my life, with a solid two-weeks of freezing cold nights, and days that didn’t reach fifty degrees, and one that didn’t reach forty degrees. Now, oddly, this month we had a day with a twenty degree low, just as we did in 2009, but this year, on our day with the twenty degree low, the high was thirty-six degrees warmer, whereas in 2009, the high on the twenty degree day was only seventeen degrees warmer. Overall, we have had very few cold days so far this year, and I am happy about it.
I should say, of course, Happy New Year. I am sorry to 1.) make my first post in the new year occur more than three weeks into 2012, and, 2.) that my first post is about something as mundane as the weather, but when uses a bicycle for transportation as I do, the weather plays a much more prominent role than it might if one drove. That is to say, riding a bike in the cold sucks.
In other recreational news, I did something I never wanted to do: I joined a gym. Every time I go I think of this:
I am finding myself surprisingly motivated. I have gone three nights in a row this week, and even if I don’t go for hours at a time, I still go. I do a little treadmill, and an assortment of weight machines that are cleverly designed so that the bar cannot fall and crush your trachea. The last time I did any weight training was my freshman year of high school, and I recall that after four months of it I was significantly stronger. I am not trying to make myself look like the guy from the Old Spice commercials, but I would like to not make a loud grunting noise every time I bend down to tie my shoes.
Also, future me will be interested to know that the gym costs only $10 per month (which is much lower than other gyms, perhaps because it doesn’t have a pool), and I didn’t have to sign a year-long contract. Also, future me will be ashamed if he can’t run for more than ten minutes straight.
In the next couple days I will write about one more of the following topics: school, work, collecting classical music compact discs, a fancy new kitty that comes around my house, songs that sound stupid but actually convey a powerfully universal truth, and more. Also, probably how absurdly excited I am getting for baseball. But also how I spent my New Year’s, and how I ate homemade cinnamon ice cream and suck at Scrabble.
Everyone in Gainesville, and many of you elsewhere, will have heard about the terrible disaster out on Interstate 75 in Paynes Prairie. The news reports are awful enough, and the photographs of the aftermath are more than one can bear. I’ve driven that stretch of highway more times than I can count. On a clear day it’s frightening enough—since the volume of traffic is so heavy, and many drivers travel at speeds upwards of ninety miles-per-hour—but on a day with heavy fog or smoke the road is a death race. Let us all be full of care and drive safely, and God help the loved ones of the poor victims of this catastrophe.