Cold-Blooded

I left Minnesota because it was too damned cold. After more than two years of living in the tropics, returning to Minnesota was a shock to my system, even in June. The temperature in Minnesota in June averages about 80 degrees. I was used to 105. My blood was thin, and after scraping my car windshield for several weeks in a row in November, I was ready to move on to a warmer locale.

Several months later, in January, I moved to my current Bay Area home in California. I threw away my turtlenecks and long underwear and expected to see palm trees lining every street. Hmm... that is a different California.

But, my blood adjusted to the point where I'm only mildly chilly on a constant basis, and I'm happy with the eucalyptus trees. Who needs palms with their pesky dropping of lethal coconuts, anyway? In short, I've grown to love it here.

And then, this morning as I left for work, I merrily tromped over to my car and realized that the entire thing was covered in a thin sheet of bumpy ice. I did a quick mental inventory of things I was carrying to see if anything would double as an ice scraper. Banana, clearly not. Tennis shoes, nope. Textbook, softcover so no. In my trunk I found a pair of gloves (hooray!) and an empty plastic bag from Target. I used my now-gloved hands to scratch a hole in the ice large enough to see, but once I started driving, it iced right back over. I pulled over two blocks up from where I had been. In the end, I had to let my car warm up for a full 10 minutes to thaw the windshield out enough so that I could see.

In Minnesota, at least I owned an ice scraper. The funny thing is, I carried my old one around until I got rid of my old car. I remember thinking how silly it was to have an ice scraper in California!