When Beauty and Breathing Don't Mix

Warning: There is a hefty dose of irony in this post.  If you find yourself aggravated beyond belief, please feel free to take a break and relax with a photo of Robert Goulet located in the previous post.

   It has been over 3 weeks since I last rode a bicycle, and my feelings about it are complicated.  There is the longing to ride (which is pretty much always present except when I'm riding), a huge amount of guilt and the sensation that I'm hurrying the apocalypse along every time I get in my car to drive a couple of miles - and then there's a great sense of relief.  Up until the point at which bronchitis began its yearly slash-and-burn tour through my lungs, I had ridden almost 400 winter miles, and felt like a Superstar.

"Yesss!"

I had my studded tires, my skills were improving, I was getting nods of appreciation from pedestrians and drivers alike, I was doing outdoor healthy stuff, I felt like I was Making a Difference in Buffalo...and so of course I had the delusion that this time, for sure, even though it has happened every year for over 30 years, I would not get bronchitis. Wrong. Cold, dry air became the Enemy, and so I had to stop doing anything outside that might cause me to want to inhale air, including riding a bike.  

   And so there is where the relief comes in, although it's bittersweet.  Because the irony is (here we go) that I love cold, dry air in the winter.  My favorite type of winter is precisely the one we're getting - average temperatures of around 15° F, snow on the ground, dry and sunny and gorgeous.  This kind of winter makes me want to ride, to run, to cross-country ski all over the place like a silly freak.  My lungs, however, are completely against such conditions and winter frolic, and rebel with a Victorian oppressiveness.  While the rest of me sits staring out the window, my wet nose pressed against the glass, my lungs plot escapes to tropical islands, dripping bayous, verandas under a July-like sun. I will admit, running away to one of these types of places is starting to seem like a great idea, especially after a coughing fit. And especially after a winter spent with our next-door neighbor.

   In our neighbor, what appeared at first to be just a personality leaning toward obsessive cleanliness has now revealed itself as full-fledged psychosis, but I might be biased.  You see, we (my other half and I) spent a bazillion dollars on a new boiler and hot water tank, to replace the barely functioning system that came with the house.  Before you could say, "Grown ups", our neighbor was protesting the abuse (his word) he had to endure from the new pipes coming out of the side of our house.  That's right, the air rushing out of and into the pipes when the boiler was running was abusing our neighbor.  His solution to all of this horrible treatment caused by our mean-spirited purchase of a boiler that worked was to try to kill us in our sleep by building a wall that blocks the flow of air through the pipes, especially when it's frigidly cold outside - as in, all winter long.  The irony of this is that his creepy wall not only endangers our lives by filling the basement with gas and bringing the internal temperature of the house to 40 degrees, but causes the pipes to make more noise as the boiler tries to turn itself on over and over and over.  His name isn't Tony Soprano, and probably when he isn't on his throne in Castle Neurosis he seems like a normal, stand-up guy. And he keeps his sidewalk clear.  Really, shiny, scary clear.  But when I'm climbing over his fence in my pajamas at two in the morning in a -30° wind chill to clear the obstructions out of our intake pipe, coughing until I puke, several thoughts are going through my mind, "I hope I can get this working and my glove back on before I get frostbite", "Maybe if I still have hands left I can use them to strangle my insane neighbor", "Wow, it sure is amazingly beautiful out here!"

   So my lungs are whispering (they only have the power to whisper right now) in my ear, "In a warm playsss your boiler won't have to turn on.  Your car and your bikessss won't disintegrate from sssalt.  Your houssse won't need so many repairssss.  You can ride your bike all year lonnnnggg and not coughhhh."  Doesn't that all sound wonderful?  All I have to do is move to a warm, humid place, and everything will be okay!  Well, most of the tropical locations outside of the U.S. are unaffordable, so that's out.  Ok, there's the American South...uh...no.  Hawaii is looking good (even though it's perilously close to unaffordable).  The people in that state seem to have an irrational fear of homeless people, however.  Uh, I guess that's it.  Move to Hawaii and get hit with a sledgehammer if it becomes too expensive, or stay here, possibly blow up in a gas explosion, cough like Keats, and admire the magnificent beauty of winter (and I don't think it gets any more beautiful than this, anywhere).  I just have to remember that if I ever start to think the whooshing air of someone's heating vent is actually a complicated plot to torture me, I should seek help from a therapist immediately.