Climate Control

Climate control

LEANINGS

Peter Egan

"WE'LL HAVE TO TAKE THOSE TOES OFF right about here," Dr. Richard Hill told me last week as he made a hatchet-like chopping motion with his hand.

I looked at him for a silent moment and then he grinned. "Just kidding," he said, "but you did manage to get frostbite on three of your toes. They should be fine in a few weeks, but try not to freeze your feet again from now on."

Dr. Hill and I grew up together in the same small town, and somewhere I've got a photo of him attending my seventh birthday party, at which I am inexplicably wearing an army uniform (my sister says I look like a member of the Hitler Youth), so he never hesitates to kid around and give me a hard time.

In any case, I was relieved to learn that I wouldn't be joining the ranks of Everest and K2 veterans by losing any toes. Sadly, nothing as romantic as moun tain climbing had transpired. I got frost bite simply from a bad combination of activities. First, I stood on the cold slab floor of my workshop while adjusting the chain on my Triumph 900 Scrambler, and then (feet already numb) went out to snow-blow the driveway with a wind chill of 46 below zero.

I took this frostbite episode as a Mes sage from God that I need to 1) find myself a pair of RAF-style sheepskin boots, and then 2) move to a warmer climate.

So I've spent several evenings this week looking at websites for warmer boots and real estate or just staring at maps.

That and checking air-park commimities in Trade-a-Plane. Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas and Texas are full of them. An

I have this dream that the ideal resi dence would be a home with a large hangar/garage on an airstrip. That way, I could go flying without paying hangar rent, have plenty of garage space for bike and car projects, and also hang out with people who are sympathetic to interesting machinery rather than, say, golf or stultifying bovine tranquility.

I've found that people who live in air parks don't consider the exhaust note of a Ducati 900SS or a Continental 220 radial to be "noise." Nor are they likely to object to the sound of a table saw, a Bridgeport lathe or a two-stage air compressor-or the smell and sizzle of arc welding.

Also, hangars are always full of in teresting cars and motorcycles, so even if you lose your medical and can't fly, it's still a great environment.

So I've been looking at real estate and maps-as I do every year about this time, when Wisconsin goes all Siberian on us. It's an annual tradition but this year I've ratcheted up the seriousness. Maybe it's the toes, which are aching slightly even now, pulsing like an emergency warning light.

The problem, when you look at a map of the U.S., is that there is something wrong with every part of the country. All states are a compromise, and no place is exactly perfect. We are not yet dead and ascended to Heaven, it seems.

Here are a few examples:

CahlOrnia-You can ride all year, but there's too much traffic iii many of the (formerly) best places. If you live in the Los Angles or Bay areas, it also takes forever to get out of town-and even longer to get back home on Sunday night. Also, real estate is high. Even with the current mortgage meltdown, Californians have not been able to face the fact that $700,000 is still too much for a two-bedroom double-wide on an alley next to a propane storage facility. Still, you can ride all year, and there are some idyllic spots, if you can somehow survive without glitzy stores.

Florida-Wonderful winters, really hot in the summer; only about 14 real curves in the entire state-and half of those are at Daytona. Lots of shrunken old people piloting apparently driverless large yellow sedans with white vinyl tops. Alligators eat your Chihuahua. Hurricanes cut your power while all the hamburger in your freezer goes bad. Huge cockroaches pose as "Palmetto bugs." Fire ants! Great pro perty prices, though (another foreclosure hotbed), and a nearby ocean. Good orange juice and grapefruit. Short drives to Day tona and Sebnng. The Keys are nice for a laid-back cruising ride.

The Southeast (Virginia, the Caro linas, Georgia)-Not too much wrong here, if you get a little mountain elevation, away from the hot coastal plain. Great roads, but if you take them far enough back into the hills you can find rednecks who have more banjo strings than teeth. On the other hand, we have the same rednecks here in Wisconsin and they can't even play banjo. I don't know what they do with their time. Complain about the weather, I guess. And freeze their toes. The Piedmont region of Virginia is quite beautiful and-I must admit-beckons strongly. Still has some winter, however, with the occa sional ice storm. Humid summers. - ,_•~______ 1__~_ -

The Southwest-Oven-hot summers but nice winters. You have to like the desert-which I do-otherwise it's quite brown and beige. Big gaps between rich and poor in many areas. Danger of "Kokopelli" and turquoise overdose. Brain-damaging levels of mystical Hopi flute music in book stores.

Texas-Big. I like Texas a lot and have many friends there, but there's always danger of real weather sliding down off the Great Plains like a broken shingle. Still, it doesn't happen every day... Food for thought.

The Northwest-Rain, but I'm told it's a relatively warm rain. You have to wonder about the temperature, though, in a place where people are so fixated on high-end coffee...

Back to Wisconsin-Amazing network of roads through green hill country; great racetracks, nice depth of overlapping European cultures; lakes, woods, good road houses, supper clubs and small town cafés.

And five blasted months of winter.

Spring will come soon, though, and then I'll fall in love with this place all over again and develop Winter Amnesia. Next November I'll find myself trapped again.

If I don't escape this year: look for an even more strongly worded version of this column next winter.