It was just above freezing when I got into the car Tuesday morning. The rising sun had just barely cleared my neighbor’s roof, and did its best to melt the frost off of my roof and windshield.
Anne and I sat in the passenger compartment shivering, surprisingly thick clouds of fog blooming in front of us with every breath, while we waited for the engine to warm up.
“We should have started the car five minutes ago and waited in the house,” I said, hugging myself to keep warm.
“When we build the time machine, we’ll make sure we do that.”
After a couple of minutes, the frost on the windshield began to soften, helped along by judicious use of the wipers. As we drove up the street, I noticed that every house, lawn, car — hell, every surface — that was still in shadow had at least some frost on it. I’m sure people who live in parts of the world that actually have seasons wouldn’t be moved by it, but it made me happy to observe some tactile evidence of winter’s impending, full-throated arrival.
About fifty traffic-filled minutes later, Anne dropped me off at the airport. Four flight-delayed hours after that, I walked into the Seattle airport, and five hours after that I walked into the Child’s Play Charity Auction.
Seventeen hours after that, I walked out of my hotel into a crystal-clear thirteen degree Seattle morning that shocked me so much, I didn’t actually feel how cold it was until I’d been sitting in my cab for almost a full minute.
Finally, about thirty-two hours after I’d walked out of my house I walked back inside. My pets greeted me at the door, and made me feel like I’d been missing for a week.
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Time Machine? Not sure that will help much, since you’ve still had to suffer through the cold….
If you’d like to see my exceptionally embarrassing contribution to the silent auction: http://img159.yfrog.com/i/xhz.jpg/
Yup. That’s what it’s like in the uppper midwest from about October through March.
Temp was about 7 F here this morning, but I rode the bus, so I just had to make sure that I was dressed for waiting.
Weather like that is what makes the market for remote starters for cars.
Cool for you to go to the auction! Glad the travel was relatively uneventful. Take care, and stay warm!
“exceptionally embarrassing contribution”
Um…huh? It’s a charity auction, not your audition for Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. If what people ultimately paid for all your items was less than what you paid in hotel and travel expenses, then it might be unfortunate.
But it’s a very worthy cause, so every dollar that people paid over your own expenses getting there is a dollar’s worth of awesome.
Oh my goodness, I wish I had known you were coming here. The coldest week of the year, natch. I was a huge Wesley fan (hey, I was 10 when TNG started) and now I love your writing. Though, like other geeks, I use the Kindle app for my iPhone, so I couldn’t really have asked you to sign my copy of Just A Geek…
Not that I have any control over it, but sorry you had to be here this week of all weeks.
The cold weather this week is like a swift slap to the face, but the sunshine sure is beautiful. I hope you caught a glimpse of the snow-covered mountains! Puget Sound was actually steaming this morning as I took the ferry across to work.
Yep looks embarrassing. Also looks like the Westin Hotel downtown, but I could be wrong.
I hope you enjoyed your brief stay in our fair city.
–chuck
since the unnatural cold in Seattle has already been commented on, I won’t add to the whining. But I will say this – how about a heads-up when you’re coming up our way for events like that so we can actually plan to attend!
I love how pets always act as though they thought you were dead and never coming home, and would have mounted a search party if they knew how to use a telephone. Every single night when I come home my dog acts like he hasn’t seen me in weeks, and the cat comes over and tells me everything that’s happened since I’ve been gone. Makes you feel kind of important, that someone cared so much that you were gone.
It could have been worse of course…it could have been an audio tape of Seth MacFarlane mispronouncing your name in his Stewie voice.
Glad you survived the cold temperatures, though.
As I started reading this I thought, “Oh, Wil thinks its cold in LA? Wait until he hears about how cold it is in Seattle.”
You win again, Wheaton.
But Child’s Play is SUCH a worthwhile cause, thank you for taking the time to help them. (of course, as I type this, the thought “duh, why wouldn’t he?” crosses my mind)
Aaargh!
“We should have started the car five minutes ago and waited in the house,”
Sorry, Wil, but although I am a big fan of your work (I even kept the envelope you sent me “Happiest Days” in because it had your autograph on it, erm, anyway), this is something so *American* to do. Do you know how many gazillion Gallons of petrol are burnt this way? Wouldn’t it be way more friendly towards good old earth by just putting on an extra layer of clothing?
Grrr.
If somebody does that over here, most of the neighbours would complain. It’s just like keeping the motor running while “just” picking up a newspaper or something.
If I see that, I often ask those people if they think if the oil-price is too high. Usually they agree. And then I tell them that turning your car’s motor on and off ten times consumes as much petrol as just keeping it running without a gear for whole minute.
Please excuse my rather long rambling, but I think we should all be aware of the fact that it’s the little things that we do every day that affect the planet and ultimately our children and their children much more than some politicians speeches in say, Kopenhagen or some other place.
Still, keep up the *other* good work!
Olof
Things are starting to finally get chilly here in Maryland, too. Our first night with sub 25-degree lows should be going on this evening, and the need to scrape our car windows every morning is just around the corner.
Despite that, pets are great at making you feel welcome, eh? Our cat Fizzgigg (yes, named after the sharp-toothed puffball in Dark Crystal) always comes running to the door when we get home. It’s an awesome feeling 🙂
http://www.livingwithanerd.com
* Obligatory Canadian dismissive attitude to the CALIFORNIAN complaining about the “cold” *
Really. I’m from Ottawa – we had just a little more than 14 feet of snow last winter.
We actually get snow in California. We just keep it on what we call “mountains”. We occasionally see glimpses of this snow on these mountains on days where the air is what most people would call “fit to breathe”. Unless you’re lucky enough to live up in those mountains:
http://z.about.com/d/gocalifornia/1/0/i/1/3/IMG_1302-a.jpg
I would have bid on the Batman hat pic. It is because of that pic that I always think of you when I think of Batman. This includes when I “zoom zoom” my mini Batmobile around my desk. Sometimes I don’t understand my patterns of association.
Rise and shine Mr. Wheaton, rise and shine. Not that I wish to imply you have been sleeping on the job, no one is more deserving of a rest, and all the effort in the world would have gone to waste, until… Well, let’s just say your hour has come again. The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world. So, wake up, Mr. Wheaton. Wake up and smell the ashes.
Yeah, buddy. Just because you Canadians cannot be sensible and cannot keep your snow in the mountains where it belongs as much as we can doesn’t give you the right to that attitude. The US has invested a lot of time and effort into Global Warming, so you Canadians should be thankful. Watch where you sling those snide comments.
*snerk*
Err… it IS a matter of perspective. Mr. Wheaton is from Southern California, where they’ve just gotten around to discovering ice. Were he from Ottawa, he’d have not mentioned the lack of temperature. How you Canadians survive in Kadath, the Cold Wastes, I am not sure, but I suspect you are not exactly from this dimension, let alone this planet.
I used to live in SoCal and thought anything below 50 degrees was sooooo cold. After living in PA for several years, I’m still wearing short sleeves in the 50s and only a light jacket in the 40s.
We made sure to save the coldest days of the year for you. 🙂 But hey, at least it was clear! The city always looks lovely on those crisp winter days with sunshine reflecting off the buildings and the water. Thanks for making the trek up here for such a worthy cause!
Yeah, it’s a trade-off. Some sort of Faustian deal, as I understand it. Sure we can survive the cold, but if a Canadian sets foot south of the 40th parallel, he or she will immediately burst into flames.
“We should have started the car five minutes ago and waited in the house,” I said, hugging myself to keep warm.
The warm thing aside, this is not a good idea. While is less of an issue on a residential street than say, running in to Starbucks, this is just an invitation to have your car stolen. It is what we in the crime analysis field call a “dumb in public” move. Please, Mr. Wheaton, don’t become a statistic. The GTA numbers down this year, let’s keep it that way.
Dude, you don’t know what cold is. Cold is having to jump-start your 23-year-old car every single day. Then again, the fact that my car is THAT old and still running maybe isn’t such a bad thing. Yeah. It’s a Toyota, they last forfriggingever.
You also don’t know what embarrassing is, either. Take a gander at this: http://yfrog.com/4gwheeeej Equally embarrassing is that it posted to my Twitter stream as soon as I uploaded it. Oh well, anything for a good laugh, right?
First thing, what an AWESOME thing you are doing! We all need to follow in your footsteps. Second, I too hate waiting for the car to warm up. When you have one like mine that is falling apart from top to bottom, it takes a weeeee bit longer than most to achieve that warm feeling…:) How nice a time machine would be, for more reasons than one…could actually be at a ‘Smiths’ concert rather than living the memories of yesteryear on Sirius 6022! Glad you made it home safe. Keep warm now:)
Even my 23=year-old Toyota’s got a set of spare keys. I leave that puppy running while I run into the store and everything else for fear that it won’t start up again when I get out. I just lock it up and roll, and I live in Philly, I don’t think you even need to look up the crime rate to know that it’s high here. A few years ago, I had a 94 Lincoln Towncar that had keyless entry. Man, did I love that feature. Too bad the car was a total piece of shit. I had it for less than eight months before the motor died on me. I think I’ll stick with my 23-year-old Toyota. It might not start in cold weather, but the damn thing’s been on the road since before I was old enough to drive it.
Oh, and because I can’t seem to warm up myself tonight, I am making me an extra cup of Earl Grey in “The Mug” 🙂
Is this the same Child’s Play that accepts stories written by kids and tours around to schools in the country acting out a few chosen ones in a play? If so, I won an award from them when I was in 2nd grade for a story I wrote. It was definitely a high point of my childhood 🙂
No, it’s a charity run by the fine folks at Penny Arcade. They run it every year to buy whatever is needed to make children’s stays in hospital a little less shitty – toys, video games, paint for the walls. Anything that is needed, really. You can find out more, here:
http://www.childsplaycharity.org/
Wil, an idea for next year’s auction, is maybe you should auction off a proclamation from the Secretary of Geek Affairs…
Doesn’t a steady dose of Molson Canadian keep your flammability down?
No, but an uninterrupted supply of McAuslan Oatmeal Stout does the trick. Unfortunately, it’s hard to find that far south…
Ah, I see. Just checkin. Thanks 🙂
Not sure if this is the place to be lecturing about the use of oil.
Clearly nobody here lives in the upper midwest – or is too polite to talk about what happened this week and make everyone else feel bad. 16 inches of snow in 12 hours followed by 0 degrees F temps with -20 degrees F wind chills. If anyone out there pshaws wind chill I invite you to Minnesota in January. And we run our cars for a few minutes at those temps cause the power steering pump just doesn’t cut it when it’s stone-fracking-cold!
Once again: We had over 14 feet of snow last winter in Ottawa.
Up until last Friday, my car had no heat. This was tolerable when I still lived in Charlotte, but right now its 16 degrees out. Friday, I got a Subaru Forester named ‘Bones’. Among other things, it has heat.
time machine? i guess they’re rather expensive to built, but there’s this quite affordable concept called a vehicle heater. i learned to appreciate it in the two years i lived in northern scandinavia. when i first came there, i also wondered why parking lots were equipped with sockets. i’d never tried to start a car at -29 degrees celsius, so i got the point first after i’d had the pleasure to walk into a café in the middle of nowhere with a car battery in order to warm it up. the locals kindly told me about this other wonderful concept called, if i found the correct expression in my dictionary, a motor block heater. i doubt that those will ever be needed in l.a., though. but wait a minute – maybe they can be transformed into a time machine by reversing the polarity?!
Fran-
When my wife lived in Ottawa as a child, her parents’ car had a block heater.
Wil-
How much did the D&D dice go for?
“We should have started the car five minutes ago and waited in the house,” I said, hugging myself to keep warm.”
The city in Canada where I live made it illegal to warm up any vehicle for more than 2 minutes.
The more you know…
Did they have the Aeofel memorial picture set up?
Gaaaaaaaaaah Wil Wheaton was in town and I missed it!! Poo
Screw your time machine, Wheaton…I’d sell discount Bolivian children to get my hands on a remote start.
Guess what,kids–it’s now just above freezing here in the ‘sunny’ southern California nights.
LOVE YOUR SHOW!
Wil,
You must like the Northwest. You’ve been up here in Seattle and down in Portland quite a few times in the past year.