This Can't Be Winter?

Across the northern hemisphere, ski boots, parkas, hats and gloves are coming out of closets and storage bags.  Having experienced a variety of winters and noticing that December is half way behind us, I'm taking a more critical look into the San Francisco winter.

I used one of my under graduate elective courses to study weather.  Yep...weather. Go Jackets!  Based on that experience, I do confidently declare the correlation and causation between latitude and seasonal
temperatures.  Money well spent, indeed!

Having spent no less than four seasons in various regions of the eastern seaboard, my interrogation of winter will begin using the popular financial forecasting method of...guessing (otherwise known as observing comparables).

San Francisco’s latitude places it somewhere north of the Richmond and south of the DC domiciles.

• Washington, DC 38°53′42.4″N
• San Francisco, CA 37°47′N
• Richmond, VA 37°32′27.5″N

For those playing along at home, San Francisco is roughly 400 miles further south than Bostonia.  As luck may have it, San Francisco experiences both warmer temperatures and smaller temperature variations.

Winter in DC is an interesting beast.  The daily highs are above freezing and the nightly lows below.  Throw some moisture in the mix and it all makes for an wintery icy mess.

It was the winter at RMC that taught me the true meaning of 100 miles.  In Ashland (10 miles north of
Richmond), snow is rare.  I recall one of the annual snowstorms…er, dustings.  I barely knew how to react when one of our friends confessed that it was their first experience of snow!  Of course,
classes were cancelled the following day.  It was then that I learned that the county didn’t own a single snow plow.  Huh?!

And then there’s San Francisco.  No snow, no ice, no sub-zero temps.  Not too bad, eh?  This is the first January since Jake joined us that I don’t need to put on snowboard pants to go on the night walk.  What a relief!

Conclusion: grab your clubs and catch me if you can.

Grande Bam Tournament

I've seen this before and it's obvious.  Ol' Man Winter is is on sabbatical.  The whole weather-verse has turned on it's head. It's 75 in Boston and 65 in Alabama.

So be it!  It's time to ring-in the new golf season with my (now) annual trip down South.  This year's destination is Willow Point in Alexander City, Alabama.  It's a tough place to get to, but the prospects of a road trip through AL are enough to keep my spirits high.  Plus, speed limits of 70 mph help the miles pass by.

I was on an early flight from Boston to Atlanta. The remaining 150 miles to Alex City were between me and the highway.  First things first however.  A billboard advertisement for Frank's House of Prime Rib was all that I needed to opt for a lunch break.

Since there was no prime rib on the lunch menu (??), I settled on the New England Clam Chowder and the Frank's Special.  The sandwich was awesome.  Look at those portions!  ...and ignore the color of the chowder.

Traffic was wonderfully fluid the whole way out to Alex City. I was astonished, really. It was a refreshing change for someone who's used to rushing home to dodge Red Sox, Celtics, and/or Bruins traffic.  Equally amazing was the complete lack of speeding.  I doubt I saw anyone going faster than 75.  Knowing that I don't blend in, I set my cruise control for exactly 70 mph.

Another fun thing about driving through Alabama is that I passed landmarks and signs for places that I've only ever read about or heard in a song: Mobile, Chattahoochee, Montgomery, and Tuscaloosa.  Even cooler is passing into the central timezone.  There's a sign and everything!  Woo!  I'm having trouble controlling my excitement.  Court and Colin told me about friends who lived in the Central timezone and were teachers in the Eastern timezone.  I had trouble comprehending the extra effort required to balance living along a timezone divide.

Enough of this kidding around, I was there to play golf (and lose some money playing cards).  I've been working on a new swing and this was my first chance to put it into competition. The results are promising.  My score is already a couple of strokes better in my first round.  I'm excited to see what the rest of the season will bring.  One things for sure, Alabama's March sun is less forgiving than Boston's.