A Little Perspective

I happened upon an amazing discovery about a week ago...

We were on our way to meet Amber and Sarah's new school principle and head of teaching and, along the way crossed over one of the rivers in Plzen. There were half a dozen or so little wild ducks paddling about on the water and we stopped so that the babies could see them and ask the usual set of questions.

The weather was biting, I'm not sure what the temperature was, but I guess, if it was above zero, it wasn't far, at any rate, the wind makes sure that your experience of the low temperature is as uncomfortable as possible - more on this in a minute...

As I watched the ducks swimming toward us (they obviously assumed we had some food for them and someone had rung the tea bell) I considered how darn cold it must be for those little beasties bobbing about on water when the ambient is literally freezing. A moment of admiration or something passed and we moved on.

A few days later I was upgrading my warm-wear at a sale in one of the centres here and chose a down and feather jacket. I'm wearing it in the photos of us by the lake in Hayley's entry below, and basically have not worn anything else since I got it. This thing is fantastically warm, I mean unbelievably warm. With a long sleeved T-shirt you can wear nothing but this jacket and be really comfy even when its really cold.

I remembered the ducks paddling happily on the freezing water and thought "Hey, those guys have got it good!" they are no where close to cold. They are permanently padded up in a feather and down coat and are probably not aware that its cold out. Apart from those little pink feet, which must be made of some kind of pliable rubber so as not to go solid, all the mechanisms for moving the feet, walking and paddling are up under a cover of feathers and must be very cozy.

I don't know how many ducks contributed to the making of my jacket, but I thank each one of them for it. I recon I have a few more feathers in my jacket than the average duck, but then again I'm a bit bigger than the average duck, so I guess it must even out. So if you are drawn to pity a feathered friend flying or swimming by on a cold day, fret not, he is well warmed and you are probably feeling the cold more than he is.

This brings me to the subject of wind... meteorological wind you understand...

I have recently learned that there are 2 basic kinds of wind: warm wind and cold wind.

Wind is the same noun for the single as it is for the plural, like one sheep is a sheep and two sheeps are still sheep, so one wind is a wind and two winds are also still wind.

Wind (pl) are the same species no matter whether they are cold or warm, but there are some drastic physiological changes that wind undergo when they change from being warm to cold.

Warm wind are well fed and lazy. They are round in shape like a Buddha and are all jolly. They can move quite quickly, but prefer not to and are quite content to laze about in the sunshine and tell jokes.

If they bump into a person, they say "Pardon" in Wind as they bounce off of the clothing or skin and move on without quarrel. Because of their larger size, warm wind are far less dense than cold wind and are therefore quite light.

When the sun goes away and there is not enough warmth around for the wind to feed on, they all get hungry and grumpy and rush around vying for the little warmth that there is. The problem is compounded by the fact that all wind are quite tall (or long) and their height (or length) doesn't change when they become cold, but their girth certainly does. This change makes them long and thin, just like an arrow, and because they are naturally round, they form pointy bits at their head and toes.

Cold wind are packed together very tightly as they crowd each other for warmth and they move around very fast as they are quite uncomfortable and think that the exercise will warm them up.

When they bump into a person, their spiky heads or feet run right through your clothes and poke little holes into your skin, they don't bounce off anymore, and are happy to stay with you to warm up. They wouldn't think about trying to avoid you, or apologising, which is why, even when you are in a shelter of some kind, out of the main flow of cold wind, when they spot you, they school over like sardines and you feel a sneaky wind bite you some place you weren't expecting.

I never knew it, but this is why it feels so much colder when wind blows.