Winter Tired

Last night, as I was trying frantically to right myself before ultimately sprawling off my bike and into some particularly hand-shredding road ice, I thought to myself, "Maybe I shouldn't bike through the winter." I biked last winter, to the consternation of my parents, who were convinced I was going to die, and occasionally myself, when I was slushed by a Mac truck going around Spadina Crescent.

In fact, I went on to think as my lobster-red hands grasped at a frozen-solid bike frame in a lengthy attempt to pick myself up off the frozen street, "Maybe I shouldn't leave the house until Victoria Day, a scant six months away, and the next time I can look forward to sweating in public."

I am no fan of the winter. Everyone in Toronto is marvelling at the lack of snow this year; we've had one piddly little drop that went hand-in-hand with the aforementioned iciness/hand pain. All my "extreme" friends are whining about how this is going to really mess with the ski season, while all my reasonable friends are whining that this is really going to mess with their regimen of sledding, drinking hot chocolate, and cuddling with their partners. I am more down with the idea of lying on the beach, drinking icy-cold diet colas, and holding hands. I'm not a winter gal.

"But surely there are good things about winter!" I can hear you exclaiming. There are: those things include Toblerone bars and...I've actually been staring at the computer for the past five minutes, trying to suss out a second awesome thing about wintertime. Fail. Sigh.

I'm not a skier; maybe if I was , I'd be more into the whole season. But, I'm a cyclist. Christmas bums me out (too much anticipation, which always spoils the pay-off), the weather is a total drag, my boots get about five times heavier, and patio season is but a distant memory. With other seasons, I can convince myself that it's not such a drag, that 40 degree weather is fun, that I love rain, that the sounds of dead leaves rattling against my third-floor window isn't a creepshow. But winter is 100% dreaded at my house. Nothing delicious is in season, it's cold, and hauling myself around the city is purely annoying.

America gets to have it both ways: they have both Alaska, which is has places named Skagway (hilarious!) and is cold; they also have Hawai'i, which have places named Honolulu (hard to spell!) and is hot as hell. Canada didn't think things through. Oh, sure, we have the North Pole - that's ours, right? - but where is our tropical getaway? If Trudeau was half the genius people thought he was, he would have annexed Cuba and I would be a happier girl today.