Dear Phil: It’s hot

I like cold weather, which is why the Great Magnet pulled me to the tropics. Fate is nothing if not mischievous.

At this time of year my eyes expect to see the snow on the mountains around my erstwhile mountain home in the states, my nose expects to get a whiff of crisp autumn leaves, and my bones look forward to the chilly shakes of cool and hearty air.

Autumn in the mountains is a season of freshly picked apples, sold directly from a stand in the farmer’s front yard.

It’s the smell of fresh coffee at the Village Grill diner where the ranchers confer in groups of three and four about girding for the coming season.

It’s a last round of tune ups on the pickup trucks while the weather is still accommodating.

It’s also time to restart the eternal philosophical argument about whether a thinner grade of straight-weight motor oil is better than multi viscosity. Everyone can quote a definitive Popular Mechanics article on the subject, but nobody can ever really find the appropriate article (“It was in the edition with the speedboat and the bikini chicks on the cover.”)

It’s rummaging around the box of winter gear only to realize–again– the universal law that no glove or mitten will have a matching pair.

It’s taking an inventory of fire wood, and making sure we’ve all got enough to go around.

It’s a last round of visits from my city friends, who are hoping the first snow won’t close the roads before they can slink back to their land of 7-11’s, malls, office buildings, and condos.

It’s a new bottle of Bailey’s in the cabinet, to be added in small slugs to the after dinner coffee as protection from the chill.

It’s bidding to bid farewell to the Madras shirts, and rotating the flannel to the front of the closet.

It’s unconsciously relocating stuff in the house to the warmer rooms.

It’s consciously relocating the stuff in the warmest rooms to the warmest corners of the rooms.

It’s asking my pals to check out my humble abode’s heating system, since I haven’t the faintest idea how it works.

It’s reassuring the friends’ kids that the bare branches of the cherry trees will, indeed, see a rebirth of green and red next season.

It’s time to recall all the Merle Haggard CD’s I loaned out because I’ll be inside and within ear reach of the stereo a lot more now.

Ditto with the Conway Twitty CD’s. They can keep the Aerosmith–those are summertime jams.

It’s time to start making excuses for not being able to see folks in the city for the upcoming holidays.

It’s time for Phil to hand out photo calendars of the tropics, to re-state his perpetual intention to move to Palawan within two weeks, and for us to shake our heads in disbelief that such climates can really exist.

Oh, they exist all right. It’s 31 degrees Celsius as I write these words in the Guam airport commuter terminal…and I don’t know what that is in Fahrenheit off-hand, but I know it’s HOT.

So…it’s time to once again send a postcard to dear old Phil, who never did follow that rainbow to the tropics.