A Cold Front

Where in the World: Places where inclement weather heightens the adventure, like New Zealand.

The Inspiration: A cold front that came in right with the beginning of autumn in Pittsburgh. Now, truthfully, I love cool weather, and the world outside is oh-so-tempting to me and my dog right now. The air is becoming crisp, and some of the leaves have yellow edges, and the world is all kinds of lovely. However, the furnace in my house has not been active since last spring, and the new one has been being installed in complicated ways for the past two weeks (I'm learning a lot about it all, though: pipes needed to be replaced, valves needed to be located in walls, the old furnace had to be removed in pieces and cut apart with a torch, fittings didn't fit, etc.). What this means in simple terms is that I'm writing while huddled next to this miracle of a space heater, and last night I baked just to heat up the kitchen.

I was starting to pout way too much about this, but then, something wonderful happened:
I remembered that in much of New Zealand and Australia, homes don't have any sort of central heating because it's not cold for enough of the year for the systems to be worthwhile. Many homes and hostels will have a sort of permanent space heater in common rooms (like you'd find under the window in an average hotel room) and maybe a smaller one on a timer in the bedrooms. Every bathroom I encountered in NZ was flat-out freezing, and for some mysterious reason also had a window cracked just enough for them to feel damp from the winter rain, too.

I noticed all this at the time, but none of it really bothered me. Certainly, I'm spoiled at home with radiators in every room and remember bundling in many, many layers on that trip, but when I was with the Kiwis the cool air was an invitation to toughen up and live in a way that was aware of the seasons and the land. So despite the fact that I'm procrastinating on an important paper in Pittsburgh today, mentally, I'm going to New Zealand, where adrenaline alleviates the chill.