Today is one of those special dates. It’s 22/2/22 (or 2/22/22 if you’re American) and I feel like I should mark that somehow with a post, so I decided to share some pictures of where I am right now.

Ordinarily, I’d be enjoying the Australian summer right about now, but thanks to COVID that wasn’t possible. So I’m currently in Colorado enjoying the snow. I’m usually what the Americans call a ‘snowbird,’ meaning that I tend to chase the sun. But COVID made being a snowbird very difficult and expensive, so the winter of 2020/21 that I spent in France was the first full winter I experienced in over a decade.

The wet weather and biting winds of that winter reminded me of everything I hate about winter. Being cold, being wet, and generally being fed up under a blanket of grey and white clouds that hide the precious few hours where the sky might otherwise be blue.

I’ve been in California for the most part, where it was warm enough to go out without a coat, to wear a T-shirt even, and where my skin caught the sun and gave me something of a tan. While it wasn’t initially planned, this was an anniversary that market thirty years since I first came to live in the USA. So I met up with old friends from that time and reminisced about those days in ways that you do when you’re old enough to fondly remember thirty years ago.

We laughed at pictures of us posing in the Mojave Desert with guitars. We thought we were cool back then, and I guess we were in out own way. I had an accent and that, along with a tasseled suede jacket I picked up at a thrift store in Fresno, gave me some kudos.

Anyway, I’m in Colorado now, where the crisp white snow looks pretty. It’s been warmer than you might imagine, and each time I’ve dressed for winter I’ve ended up being too hot. This is a famously sunny state, boasting an average of 360 days of sun, but not today. On this mathematically interesting date, the air is crisp and cold, making me thankful for the thermals I packed.

I could do winters if they were short and included sunny blue sky days. It’s been fun playing with snow here, but I still prefer the warmth of a summer day, the long hours of daylight, and the warm evenings. But for now, this snow is fun.