Well, it was inevitable.
This morning there was a few skiffs of snow around the city, but for the most part I could have still raked the autumn leaves dawdling in my backyard.
By this evening, a generous blanket had covered the park and streets.
I guess it really is time to dig out the winter running gear.
Happy Halloween!
With near certainty, within a week or so I’ll be shovelling the sidewalk clear of fresh snow and contemplating pulling my cross country skis from storage.
But … as of right now it is still October, the air is crisp but not quite freezing, and as the sun starts to set over to the west I’m busy putting out the last few decorations and readying a big bowl of candy for the inevitable arrival of wee trick-or-treaters.
We spent the better part of the weekend cleaning up the backyard, raking the fallen leaves from the grass, and stacking the outdoor furniture in the shed.
This year I again set up a cozy set of wooden benches around my backyard firepit and kept the campfire supplies handy near the front of the storage area so I can attempt some winter cookouts outdoors. Last year the snow fell and I piled up small heaps and built burms into a campfire cove in the middle of the yard where we cozily cuddled around our old fire bowl. This year I hope to improve on the design and add the cooking capacity by making use of my new-this-season fire pit. What would be more fun that toasting a big pot of chili over the fire come December, warming up that big cast iron Dutch oven for a steamy winter wonderland feast right in our backyard?
Still, we have a few days of pre-snow to enjoy the dwindling remains of the late-summer and autumn.
In the neighbourhood one subdivision over they are likely to send off the month with a celebration of Halloween fireworks. I’ll hand out some candy from our front door, click off the lights as the evening grows later, and wander across the street to check them out.
Boom! Crack! Pop!
And … boo!
Then. It’s basically winter. Alright, that is a little scary.
Life happens.
It being Sunday, I went for a run this morning. A Sunday run is not that unusual, you say … well, except for the fact that I’ve been barely conscious for the better part of a week and a half.
The nine klick run through the near-freezing suburban trail system was a mix of joyous relief and pounding pain.
Relief, because after ten days in a perscription-induced fog of pain and sleep and blurry half-aware hum, it was wonderful to be back out on the streets feeling the air and the asphalt and the buzz of adrenaline.
Pain, because my tooth felt every jolting footstep like an earthquake aftershock, and oh right we had one of those a few days ago, too. The teeth are unforgiving bellwethers of health and prosperity, it seems.
I try to keep things light and upbeat on this blog as much as I can, but given that a tooth infection that left me all but bedridden for more than a week also found me AWOL from writing the same, I figure I owe a small explanation.
I recall, but you may not that about six months ago I lost a filling.
I had it repaired, took some antibiotics, and went along my merry way.
Or so I thought.
The thing about lost fillings, tho, the thing that doesn’t get mentioned (or if it did didn’t get heard or understood because there was a lot of background noise, everyone was wearing pandemic masks, and my face had just undergone two hours of emergency dental work back in March) is that infections are a real possibility and a big ol’problem.
They creep up on you.
You are busy minding your own business, planning your running training schedule, looking forward to some new snow, and pushing through work hectics. Then the pain starts, at first as a mild headache, then later as a throbbing migraine-like mist over your brain, and then ultimately as electric shocks running up the side of your face that hurt like so much angry bacteria ravenously feeding on the nerves of your molar … until your wife needs to drive you to an emergency dental appointment in the middle of the morning where they do x-rays and give you stack of prescriptions an inch thick and send you along your way with a fresh appointment for an upcoming root canal.
I’ve been popping a cocktail of drugs to kill the infection, sooth the pain, and reduce the swelling, and it has left me tired and numb and so much disinterested in finding interesting things to write about here. So I didn’t. Sorry.
Did I mention that life happens?
Well, life happens.
And yet somehow I woke up this morning feeling almost … almost … back to normal, a few days prior to that root canal appointment later this week, and decided I could probably handle some time on the trails.
It turns out I was right.
I just wish sometimes these lessons came a little less painfully.
A few of my friends and I met up earlier this evening, er, late in the afternoon for an after work run around the neighbourhood.
As the winter approaches, daylight runs are going to get increasingly rare, and I’ll need to fish my running headlamps from storage and make sure they are charged up.
Of course, the unusual hour for our meetup prompted a long conversation on the subject of daylight savings time, that twice-per-year ritual of shifting our clocks by one hour.
Spring ahead. Fall back.
And also because tagged onto the upcoming municipal election ballot for next Monday is a province-wide referendum on the very existence of daylight savings time asking the population of the Canadian sliver of this timezone if we wish to continue the ritual.
Perpetually staying on one time, never shifting to adapt our clocks to the shifting wax and wane of the seasonal daylight flux would be less exhausting for at least two days of the year.
I would also mean that the diminishing daylight hours would lock into a regular cycle wherein the sun may not rise until late in the morning during the deepest days of winter, or alternatively set in the middle of the afternoon.
I’m used to running in the dark in the winter, but even I have to pause and wondering what the right answer will be when I vote on Monday.
Or what I’ll tell my grandkids some day: y’know we used to flip flop our clocks back and forth twice a year, everyone was late for work and grumpy, and then one day…
