Tenth Avenue Freeze-out

"I'm running on the bad side / And I got my back to the wall / Tenth Avenue freeze-out, Tenth Avenue freeze-out."

Well, technically I'm not; Tuesday is a day off from the running regimen. And thank God for that. It was minus 2 degrees outside when I was enjoying a breakfast of apple and cinnamon oatmeal, English breakfast tea and orange juice at the kitchen table an hour ago. I'm certain the mercury had nothing to do with Bruce Springsteen's song, but it is well below freezing today, whatever street you're on.

Here I am with two my three daughters at Illinois Wesleyan
University's Family Weekend--a much warmer day was
Nov. 6th. The gold Silver Streaks stocking cap was one of
my first running finds earlier that week, just after Halloween.

But I didn't know the temperature until after I'd gone out to help daughter No. 2 open the garage door (it wasn't frozen, it's just that the springs are maladjusted, requiring a little effort to release the locking rods). Seeing her perplexed and frustrated by the door separating her from her beloved car, I rushed the her aid clad only in my Guinness sleep shorts and a "beater." It was icy but not noticeably colder than yesterday's 7 degrees at the time of my familial car-starting.

That observation caused me to ponder the practical differences in thermometer readings. I mean, there must be some real difference between minus 2 and plus 7 or even plus 2. Housed in flesh and hair, though, our bodies don't possess the precise instrumentation to tell the difference, I think. Which is really weird, considering the complexity of the human brain. Then again, how many of us can really differentiate among the many subtle shades of a given base color out of the hundreds available in the spectrum of "millions of colors" in a computer monitor setting, for example?

So, what I'd like to see is a quantifiable comparison of temperatures that we can understand. How about the Ice Tray Scale? How long does it take an ice-cube tray of typical tapwater (or distilled water if you want a more scientific medium) to freeze at 32 degrees F? And at 25 degrees? 20, 15, 10, 5, 0, -5, -10? You get the idea. I suppose that information might be out there on the Net somewhere; I've just been too disinterested until now to look for it. And now that I've posed the question I'm just too lazy to conduct the search. Maybe later. After all, I don't have to run today.