Yeah, I HATE cold weather. Of course, I have Florida blood now, after living here for 26 years, so "cold" is anything below 50 degrees. If it is below 60 degrees, it's downright chilly feeling
I used to live in Maryland, and had my fill of the cold weather there. Connie and I used to vacation in Florida twice a year, and we decided to buy land in Florida to retire to some day. So we bought as parcel just below Tallahassee.
For a few years we used to come down to our property and camp out on it, figuring we would continue doing that till we reached retirement age and then build a house there. One time we were on the way back home (Maryland) when we stopped by a roadside stand selling fresh pecans. It was run by an old grizzled looking guy named Tony and while he was helping to load the bags of pecans into the back of our Bronco he noticed our license tag. He looked kind of puzzled and confused, and finally said, "Say, do you mind if I ask you a question?". "Sure," I said. "I see you are from Maryland. Just why in the hell would anyone live that far north?" Well, that was a very good question. So my answer to him was, "Well, I was born up there, and I guess I just didn't know any better."
I thought it humorous, but didn't give it much thought on the drive back home. Anyway, when we got back home, and I continued the drudgery of going back to work at Quotron, when I showed up at the office I found that a friend of mine there had been out sick. Before I left John mentioned that he had a tightness in his chest and thought that he was coming down with a cold or something. Well, I happened to be talking with one of the supervisors and mentioned that I thought John had been correct about coming down with a cold. The guy just looked at me for a few moments and said "Well, it's a bit more serious than that. John has lung cancer." He had suffered a collapsed lung, and they discovered a tumor about the size of a plum inside it. I did talk to John several times before he decided to spend his final days out in Texas. He said that he had smoked cigarettes for most of his life, but quit three years ago. "Not soon enough, apparently," he said. During our conversations it always came up that he really regretted knowing that all of the plans he had for when he got older were never going to happen.
It was after one of those sobering conversations that I decided to have a talk with Connie about OUR plans to move to Florida in what would have been quite a few years. A move like that is bad enough, but we had a TON of animals that needed to be moved as well. But if it was going to happen, doing it right when I put the animals down for brumation just seemed to be the logical time to do it, and that was coming up FAST.
Anyway, not to bore you further with more details, it was that combination of someone pointing out to me that living in colder areas of the country is OPTIONAL, and another person pointing out to me that fate can take your future away from you without warning, got us to move to Florida. Yeah, it was a struggle, but you couldn't get me to move back up north now for love nor money.
And to be honest, I'm one of the guys actually rooting for "global warming".
There would be down sides to it, of course, for some people, but life is always a compromise anyway. For me, right here, I think it would be just fine. Just might need to dodge the occasional hurricane a few times now and again.....
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