It's All Relative

It was 44 degrees out when I got ready to ride this afternoon, which a month ago would have seemed like a heat wave; today it seemed cold. As I gathered up my winter riding clothes, I thought about a conversation I had with my dad earlier. He had to go in for X-rays. The technician kept apologizing because the table he needed to lay on was cold. A cold table wouldn't bother my dad a bit, apologizing over it incessantly would drive him nuts. He relayed this seemingly insignificant incident to me in bewilderment.

I understand where my dad was coming from, an 83 year old man who fondly talks about his time serving in World Word II like most people reminisce about summer camp. I told him this X-ray tech just doesn't know what it is like to lay on your frozen driveway in February to change a car's water pump. This seemed to put him at ease, enough so we could move past this incident and talk about something else. I think what he was really laminating about was how soft we have become as a society.

I stepped outside again to fine tune my cold weather gear. Damn it was cold. I decided to ride the trainer instead.