Sunrise

This morning I had a very unusual commute in that both of my carpool people were staying home, so I drove alone. I took advantage of the opportunity to make a stop on a rural road along the way to capture the sunrise. It was an awesome display of colors with a firey streak of sunlight slicing through the cold blue clouds and reflecting faintly off of the trees and houses nearby. The contrast in colors seemed to hint that there might be some warmth trying to break through the cold, but within moments of taking this picture the clouds moved across the horizon, blocking out the sunlight and leaving everything gray again.

You're a real jerk, winter.

A Frozen Sky

The suspension was frozen on the car this morning and rolling down I-380 at 70 mph with locked suspension feels sort of like when I was a kid riding in a metal Radio Flyer wagon being pulled along really fast behind a friend's bicycle over a bumpy sidewalk. The novelty wears off quickly.

But there was a really cool sunrise as I was driving to work. And when I say "cool," I mean -11º with an even lower wind chill. The sky and the entire landscape was a grayish-blue, but the sun shone a bright orange with a vertical flare that stretched up past the clouds. I noticed a sundog to the left of the sun and then after a few minutes I could see that there was actually a second one to the right! My carpool passenger snapped a few pictures as we reached the top of a hill, out away from the trees (I haven't seen those pictures yet, but I'm sure they are mind-blowing).

Winter is great and as much as I like scraping ice and frost off of the car, and shoveling driveways and walks, and feeling the moisture from my breath freeze my beard, and being reminded of my mortality every time I try to go for a walk longer than 5 minutes... I am looking forward to spring.