Winter, being less than tempestuous around here, always catches me with my pants down. Then up. Then down. Then up. …
Take yesterday, for example. It wasn’t all that cold, but there was a stiff, bitter wind out of the northwest. I briefly considered and swiftly rejected a bike ride, then set about trying to figure out what to wear for a short trail run.
Jaysis wept, etc. The winter clothing options in my dresser look like the “Free” box at the last day of a garage sale in a bad neighborhood.
Paddygucci base layers from when they were still made in the US of A. Hind tights old enough to run for president, in any season. Prehistoric Smartwool socks that couldn’t even make the cut for that “Free” box.
And none of this gear has a pocket for the iPhone, which I have carried religiously since breaking an ankle during a tech-free run five years ago (unable to summon a chariot like a king wounded in battle I had to serf home using a downed tree limb as a crutch). One long-sleeved Columbia top, a bit of VeloNews swag, sports a zippered iPod pocket in the left sleeve, with cutouts for earbud wires. Anybody remember iPods? Wired earbuds? Or VeloNews, for that matter?
In the end I chose the Columbia top (leaving the iPod and earbuds at home); the warmest (and possibly eldest) of my Paddygucci base-layer shirts; Darn Tough wool socks; Sugoi tuque; Smartwool gloves; and the lightweight Paddygucci Terrebonne pants I shredded when I broke the ankle (three pockets plus plenty of holes if I wanted to choose the scenic route for the earbud wires from the iPod I wasn’t packing).
And thus equipped, as Herself and I were jogging up the final winding climb before the paved descent back to El Rancho Pendejo, I thought, “Goddamnit. I am totally overdressed for this shit. I should’ve gone for a ride.”
Mad Blog Media 
I have an iPod Touch, the final iteration, and use it every day, mostly as a music player in the house and car. You can email and message on it if and even use the browser if necessary. But, you better have good vision! Mine is wifi only, and I would buy another today if they still made them.
Ah the Touch. Mine logged a zillion miles and still plays if plugged in. Once I parked my music library in the cloud, the IPhone took over. Then I found I could stream Radio Paradise in hi-res and that’s how newish music reaches me. OMG I’ve got SO many CDs. Talk about bi-polar, I’ve got almost all the CDs backed up in Flac format on a hard drive as well as several mega size SD chips. I no longer remember why!
I have all my CDs in a big notebook in the garage where the last CD player resides. I also have an Apple smart drive to read and write CD onto the Macbook. I have loaded all the songs I want from all those CD into the Macbook in full CD quality. From it I copy, in full CD quality, the entire music library onto the Apple devices we own, including the Touch which is around 3 years old. I connect the Touch to the car using a cable into the USB-C port on the dash. Play and charge at the same time, control it from the car’s display, and I think, with better sound quality than Bluetooth. People tell me just get a cell phone. I don’t want one.
I have a second-generation iPod Touch that I can Bluetooth to a JBL speaker in the kitchen or an Edifier speaker setup in the dining room, but mostly it gets used as a kitchen timer.
My iPod Nano (7th gen) used to be my fitness tracker, until I got the Watch. Now it’s music when I’m road-tripping and/or camping, especially if I have trouble sleeping. It also Bluetooths to whatever’s handy, but generally I use a nice set of Bose earbuds that Herself gave me.
As for Ancient Apparel, I’ve got some RailRiders pants, shirts and layer pieces that are hitting the 30 year mark. They have a certain patina that says “ cheap old geezer”. I bought two pair of their winter lined pants 3 years ago that will outlast me and perhaps my offspring.
The older I get and, obviously, the more weather I have seen, the less accurately I gauge the appropriate garments required for survival.
But I rarely go so far that I can’t turn around 15 minutes into it and head back to either the house or the car.
It’s been ages since I’ve been 30+ miles away from base camp and found myself in a predicament.
I think I need to remedy that this weekend …
Sometimes I’ll turn around if I’ve chosen poorly from the clothes drawer(s). But mostly I mutter, “Well, I guess this is me now. …” Gotta be some class of an Irish hair shirt buried deep in the DNA.
“I’ll save being smart for next time … or maybe the time after that!” Yep, that’s generally my attitude. A good ass-kicking from Mother Nature to start the day puts everything else in perspective.
Steve I ditto your diminished ability to guage your tog choices. I’m finding in cold temps, a whole ‘nudder’ internal thermostat was installed without my permission. Used to run hot now I”m finding I damn well better add the extra layer or a warmer cap. Also have adapted to wearing some form of pack or pannier to carry extra clothes that may need to be added or come off. Too bad my purchase of a new home HVAC this year didn’t apply to me auld bones too. Good thing I have lots of wool sweaters in the cedar chest but as an aging bugger, I wish they were cardigans!
Ouf! I hear you there, mates. I don’t know when exactly it happened, but my tolerance for cold — and by “cold,” I mean pretty much anything below 40° — has done croaked and froze solid, like some poor sap from a Jack London story.
The thermostat at El Rancho Pendejo is set at 68° in the daytime and 64° at night, and damme if I’m not wearing a long-sleeve sweatery sort of thing with a fleece vest over the top of it most of the time. Paddygucci pants and wool socks, too.
So far I’ve managed to avoid wearing a hat indoors, which is of course bad manners. But I can foresee a day not too far in the distant future when I bark “Fuck manners!” and pull on the old IWW watch cap.
Just stumbled upon some Wildflecken and Soyosan Mountain, Korea pix of 2LT and CPT SteveO’, meandering about in the snow with my sleeves rolled up. One of my troops came up with PBIT, for Polar Bear In Training. Even though I was born in Florida, something told me to forego Airborne School in Georgia and spend my third summer at Hudson High mucking about in the Arctic Circle, where a dozen of us with nothing better to followed up the Northern Warfare course with a volunteer project a few hundred miles north of Fairbanks, sticking poles in the ground (glacier goosers, Dr Melvin Marcus called both us and our surveying markers) to see whether the glacier was doing a 180.
And then I hit the Big Six Oh.
Now I’m the guy walking the dogs in longjohns, fleece, and wind stopper with a hood up over my toque. (How the dogs got into my longjohns, fleece, and wind stopper, I’ll never know!)
It’s not like my furnace got smaller. It’s just flashing an error code that I can’t find in the owners manual.
“Long underwear, that’s how I roll
I once was cool, now I’m just cold
Remind me why I came into this room.”
When my wife asks if I can’t remember why I came into a particular room, I refuse to give her the satisfaction with an honest answer. Instead I always say, just checking if you moved any of my stuff.
Haw! “I’m onto you, Toots. …” Keep ’em guessing, that’s my motto.
“Hm, maybe he’s not as dumb as he looks. …”
“Trust is the most important component of any relationship. Because when the trust is gone, it’s no fun lying to each other anymore.”
Marriage advice from Norm from Cheers