Winter in Florida

So, winter has finally hit my old state.  Now, there is a common misconception that we don't have winter in Florida.  We do.  It's just two weeks longs, and comes a couple days at a time.  Florida winter would be any morning you wake up and the temperature is less than 40 degrees.  It only gets this way when we have a cold front, so we get a very windy, often times damp, 30 some odd degree morning.  Yeah, its not really a fun situation to be sure.  To complicate matters, by afternoon, it'll be 60-something and sunny.  How do you dress for that?  Layers.  But the colds never really around enough to figure out what layers.  No one wants to be carrying around all these layers either by mid afternoon.  So you go home from work, its cool and sunny.  You leave for work and its like "Holy crap, when did this happen?"  This happens for a few days a few times a year.  You never get the chance to adjust.  After 22 years, I admit I never got the hang of it either.

But the first cold front of the year has hit Florida. I can tell by people on my Facebook page saying things like, "It's 35 degrees?!?  This is Florida!" and posting links to newspaper articles talking about heavy frost and how we won't have any citrus crop and ITS THE BEGINNING OF THE APOCALYPSE!!! The Mayans meant Jan 4, 2012, not Dec 21.  Keep pets and children indoors!  Don't burn down your house with a space heater.  Only, this happens every year.  More than once.  And this is what happens every.single.time.

Yes, apparently cold is 50 degrees for a low. (Mom is somewhere right now saying "Well it's cold to me!"  Aren't you?)

I mean, if it snowed, which is has, I think people would faint.  This is out of our area of knowledge.  Sure, we know summer.  Oh boy, do we know summer. I we know those of you who do not.  Yes, I am looking at you, sunburned, spandex wearing British tourist on International Drive.  You and your tomato red clan. It's called sunblock. And no, you can't just keep drinking beer like you do at home.  Because after 2 or 3 on the beach, we will have to call an ambulance because you didn't want to be a sissy and drink any water with that.

So, since I fully believe I am the most winterized native Floridian that has ever existed, I will say this: That is not a cold snap, that's a heat wave.

My First Winter - The backstory

So, here's the deal.  I am from Clermont, a smallish (well, its not so small anymore) town outside of Orlando, Florida.  Yes, the land of sunshine and Mickey Mouse.  I had been born and raised, gone to school, worked, gone to college all within a 50 mile radius.  My entire family lived in that circle too.  A couple years ago, I decided it would be a great idea to join the United States Coast Guard.  It took a while to get everything in order, but in January of 2011, I started my journey at bootcamp in Cape May, New Jersey.  Up until that point, I had seen snow twice.  I was too young to remember the first time, and the second time I was in NYC with my dad a month before I shipped out.  There were a couple of snow flurries while we were there.  This was the highlight of my winter experience.  Anything below 60 was cold, and I was going to bootcamp right after a legendary blizzard.  So began my journey with the white stuff.

In bootcamp, there was snow, oh yes.  But the trucks cleared it overnight and I never really got to experience it, because well, running outside and making a snow angel would be unsmart in such a setting. One time I did sneak around to the back of the barracks building and stick my hand in it.  HOLY COLD!  Then I scampered away back to formation where I pretended the stuff didn't exist.

When I graduated in March, I went to sunny California.  After school finished there, I was to go to my first permanent duty station, Kodiak, AK.  Where is Kodiak, you ask?  Well, its an island off of Alaska in the Gulf of Alaska, 150 miles or so south of Anchorage.  With 7,000 people.  The Walmart is the size of a Walgreen's in Orlando.  In Alaska.  Where it snows.  And it's cold.  And I had no idea what any of this meant.  I had the joy of getting here the day before my 23rd birthday, September 16th.  So I have to learn about this winter thing. And fast.

Let's recap. Cold. Island. Snow. Alaska. No real civilization. Yeah, this is going to be fun.