First Church of the Streets Article 4

     The first time I ever dealt with double digit below zero weather, I had considered it an adventure just by the fact that I was in it. It was in January of 2000, and the temperature hovered at sixteen point six degrees below zero, Fahrenheit. I went outside on my porch, only wearing a sweater and jeans, thinking, this is the stuff I'd only heard about on the Weather Channel. When I first went out, still blanketed by the heat from the wood stove inside, I was deluded into thinking, hey, this isn't so bad. But then the cold hit like a tidal wave, crashing into my whole being like a glacier from Antarctica. In a matter of a few seconds, it felt like my bones were frozen. I decided it might be a good idea if I went back indoors.

     That was four years ago, and although it had some cold spots hit here and there, no day was as cold as that morning. It seemed as though that record would hold indefinitely. That is, until January 2004.

     The winter started out deceptively mild: highs in the forties and fifties, good for hiking, bad for snowmobiling and other winter delights. Then the rain came, and kept coming, to the point where it seemed debatable that there would even be a white Christmas. There were no indications that the North Pole would pay a belated Yuletide visit. But of course things can change quickly. Very quickly.

     Out of nowhere, or actually, the Arctic, subzero temperatures attacked my humble abode. On the television, shows were constantly interrupted with loud beeps warning of wind chill warnings. The temperature one evening before I went to bed hit the double digits below zero Fahrenheit. It seemed very likely that the old record of -16.6 F was going to go by the wayside.

     When I woke up the next morning, a Saturday, the temperature hovered at -16.1 degrees. It was two hours before sunrise. I peeked at it on and off. Finally, about a half hour later, a new record was set at -19.7 degrees below zero. I wondered if somehow I woke up in northern Minnesota and no one told me.

     So, being that it was so ungodly cold, and the frigidity going to our brains, we decided it was a great time to go out to breakfast.

     The vehicle was yelling and screaming "What the &*(^! are you doing to me?" as it warmed up. My person was also protesting in kind, feeling the weather bite through my many layers. It was so cold that we found it inhumane to take our loyal canine with us, so we left him home with the cat. The dog and cat break all stereotypes, being great friends, but that doesn't mean that the dog likes missing out on a car ride to chill out with the cat. He had no idea how good he made out by staying behind.

     The roads were silent as we drove, like there had been some kind of evacuation and the only vehicles left were trucks and vans, proceeding to some medical emergency where frostbite had taken over. Billows of steam came from each vehicle, as though they wanted to breathe as hard as possible to ward off being frozen to death. Even on streets that were more populated, it looked like what I would think a scene in Northern Alaska would be. And here we were, going to breakfast.

     Being that it had been so deserted on the road, I was thinking we'd be the only customers. But it was the usual quarter-filled capacity that one would expect at 8 am on a Saturday morning in a college town. The server who approached us was wearing a short-sleeved uniform, and I got cold just looking at her. I ordered a veggie omelette and my spouse a meat omelette.

     Conversations billowed throughout the dining hall as it usually does in restaurants, and from the strains I overheard I gleaned the record lows that other people had experienced: -17, -15, and even some that broke twenty below. Some men, maybe truck drivers or hunters, talked about the temps further north, how in some places it was -25 or -28. They kept asking for coffee.

     By the time we finished our breakfast, the restaurant was up to one-third full. The air didn't seem as cold, but that was probably only because I ran from one warm place to the next, as my spouse already had the vehicle warmed up. The temperature, according to one of those bank displays, was now a sunny -11. We almost went for a Saturday drive at that point, but the vehicle decided to stop this insanity by throwing up its "Check Engine" lights, prompting us to change plans and head home. As soon as we altered course, the vehicle stopped displaying the lights. Its mission to get us back to warmth had been accomplished.