Frozen Over

An hour on an ill-fitting stationary bike is about a I can call exercise for this weekend. Since we arrived in Iowa City Friday afternoon, I think the highest temperature has been around 14F. Right now, on Sunday morning, it's 7 degrees below zero. On the plus side, it's dry! Very dry. I might have gone out for a long walk, but with wind chills in the range of -17 to -25, it's really not too comfortable, especially with my somewhat inadequate wardrobe. Amazingly, I spotted a few people riding bikes. The Iowa River, just outside the window here, is pretty much completely frozen over. A few geese congregate around a small spot of open water. I've seen a number of bald eagles on this trip, which involved an hour's drive from Moline, IL, aka the "Quad Cities" airport. We arrived about an hour late. In Atlanta we waited in a line of seventeen airplanes for our turn to take off. Then, once we had reached our cruising altitude, the pilot said that we had a 180 mph headwind that would slow us down considerably.

The Daughter's meet was fun. This was a "quad" meet, which means there were four teams competing concurrently, and the Hawkeyes did pretty well, posting their highest score of the year and sweeping the podium on all events. Granted, these weren't exactly the top teams in the country, but still they executed well and their scores were solid. Unfortunately, I left my new camera at home, so getting any decent photos from the meet was practically impossible because of the lighting. This meet was held in the "Field House" rather than the big arena, so the lighting is a challenge even to the folks with the $5,000 digital SLRs. My old Nikon Coolpix with it's ASA 100 equivalent is in way over it's head. Anyway, The Daughter had a fairly good meet, placing third on both Beam and Floor, so everyone came away in a pretty good mood. Their next meet, which is next weekend, is in Anchorage, Alaska. They're probably looking forward to the warmer weather over there! After the meet, with the temperature already around -1F, we went to eat at the Brown Bottle downtown. That involved a walk of two or three blocks from the parking garage. It is amazing how quickly you get cold under those conditions, especially when it's as windy as it was last night. I noticed that the local student population uses the "run fast" approach for getting from one bar to the next when severely underdressed. In fact, I am always surprised by how lightly some of the people who live here dress under these conditions. I guess you get used to it.

Our flight back home isn't until this afternoon, so I guess we'll be hanging around here until 1 pm or so. Maybe, if we're really lucky, there will be enough hot water to take a real shower. That would be nice. The predicted low tonight in Iowa City is -17F. Now, that's cold.