It’s that variable time of year, when the weather vacillates between winter and spring quite arbitrarily. And it’s this time of year when the different kinds of cold are most clearly defined.
There’s the biting cold, with the lazy wind that goes straight through all barriers rather than around, and freezes your blood in your veins. You spasm with the pain of it as it thaws again and starts to flow, and wonder why you came out.
There’s the damp, clammy cold of winter mists and fogs and freezing rain, that permeates everything and chills the bone marrow and refuses to shift, the kind that keeps you too cold to shiver. You clench your teeth in your helmet and hope your eyes don't freeze solid.
There’s the sharp, clear cold that nips at exposed skin but stops short at thermal layering. The kind of cold that goes with bright skies and freshly coloured landscapes, as if the world is newly painted, freshly minted.
The kind of cold that makes you gratefully curl your fingers around your coffee cup, thankful they’re not completely numb, although they tingle at the added heat. The kind of cold that's perfect for a winter-spring ride, layers deep past daffodils.
