I COLD 2019
January 31, 2019: 32 below when I got up this morning. Hey, it’s January in Minnesota. Deal with it. TV commentators are hand-wringing about the current polar vortex. Schools are closed. Even the mail isn’t being delivered. Missouri relatives call and wonder if we are still alive. Yep. We’re not dumb enough to go outside, or lick flagpoles. It was 13 below down there. Ha! You think that’s cold? As another Randy Bachman sang: You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Missouri relatives think there are no lazy people in Minnesota. With that cold weather how could there be? I don’t know about lazy, but homeless advocates are rounding up people who have been riding the light rails or hunkering down in apartment hallways just to stay warm. In the meantime I’m toasty in my 67 degree heated home with the furnace running full blast. Counting my blessings. Can’t remember when, but here is a ditty I wrote a while back when the cold hit like a brick, as it is doing now. Stay warm.
I cold
Snow dandruff
Snow plows
Wind chill
Twenty below
I cold
Road ice
Cars ditch
State patrol
Pile up
Gridlock
Ice dams
Frozen pipes
Space heaters
Lap blankets
Bundle up
Snow blow
Shovel walk
Back ache
Frost bite
Schools close
Sun dogs
Weather warning
Wind chill
Ground blizzards
Trees snap
Power out
Dark days
Cabin fever
Spring dreams
Thaw ever?
Stir crazy
Primal scream
I cold
uncle
Bad Randall 
My coldest memory moments: #1 – Climbing a 400′ tower on Dad’s birthday in 1975. The FAA required (at that time) that if a tower light burned out, you had 24 hours to replace it. Well, it burned out (top one at 400′) and I climbed the tower all by myself, stood on top of the tower to replace the bulb in about 5 degree weather with no one else from the company around to notify the next of kin if I fell off the tower and went splat. Think that would happen in today’s workplace rules….uh, no! I had about 3 feet of massive snot icicles, commonly known as snotcicles, but otherwise made it up and down that climb extremely cold, but ok. #2 – Re-positioning satellite dishes on Mt. Morrison Colorado in the winter of 1980. These dishes were manufactured by Hughes Electronics and were 10 meters in diameter – about 33′ – big dogs! The mounting frame structure was pretty massive and large electric motor/screw assembly was buried in snow and ice. I don’t remember which communications satellite we lost signal from, but we had to re-position to pick up those new signals on a different satellite. Air temperature was around -15, but windchill would have been around -40 or so. We worked outside in this temperature environment all day and had to come up with many bastardized techniques to get the dish to move. We basically built a controlled fire around the tracks of the frame and combined the use of our winches on our trucks in combination with the electric motor/screw assembly built into the frame system…….I had a photo once upon a time of our group of three workers standing next to a couple of 55 gallon drums we built fires in. Everyone had big beards and massive snotcicles. Grateful for a warm house and bed that night.Â
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Glad you didn’t go splat, bro. Warmed up to 2 this a.m. Predicting 40 and rain on Sunday. Bizarre!
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