| Rick Blue's Other Life |
 Rick Blue  Rick Blue was born in Liverpool, England, but raised in Maine, New Jersey, and Toronto. He has an MA in English from Concordia University. He has been involved in bands and media music in Montreal for over twenty years. In 1981 he won an international 'Clio' award for excellence in advertising. He once appeared on television naked. His life had no real meaning, however, until he began to play with Bowser and Blue. Rick plays guitar, mandolin, and harmonica, and sings in a rather pleasant baritone when George will let him. He is also a columnist for Montreal's outstanding West Island Gazette.. His LCC columns are archived here |
Posted
02.19.15 Summer is not a season, it's a place.
MONTREAL | I just returned from a tour of Florida, Texas and Arizona with the Canadian Snowbirds Association. Apparently, it was a good time to go.
Montreal, and indeed the whole northeast, is experiencing another one of the kind of winters for which we are famous.
It's a location where you will actually hear someone say with relief: "Well, at least it's too cold to snow!”
And, I must admit, it was fun to watch the TV reports of constant freezing temperatures and enormous snowfalls from the distant vantage point of the southern U.S.
For instance, we were sitting at a terrasse at a marina in Naples, Fla., when this very subject came up. It was perfect weather, 75 degrees with no humidity. The sun was bright in a clear, blue sky.
It was time for a beer and an epiphany. Our epiphany was simply this: Summer's not a season, it's a place!
In other words, summer is happening right now. Just not in the north. So if you want it to be summer again, you can have your wish. You simply have to go to where summer is.
Observation and deduction equal science!
And it happened again when I returned home, as I took all my crumpled stage clothes to my local laundry. I was listening to the owner complain about the weather here.
I respect him because he is doing his best to make our world a better place, one shirt at a time.
He was explaining to me that spending the winter in Florida was not really that expensive when you factored in all the expenses you would have up here anyway. There was an initial outlay of money for your accommodation down there, but after that, the money you spend would be money you would spend up here.
The basic things that help you stay alive, which are more in the winter, cost more up here.
So if you look at the accommodation outlay as your yearly vacation expense, instead of going somewhere in the summer, when it is nice here in Montreal, you go somewhere when it ain't.
And as we get older, the "not nice” can become downright dangerous. Let's face it, the snow and ice can make the act of walking to the local dépanneur a heroic odyssey of epic proportions.
So he had figured it out. And he was planning his escape.
This is what so many Snowbirds have also figured out. And what we felt as we sat in the sun on that terrasse in Naples.
We smiled in the sunshine as the waitress said: "Y'all want a wedge of Key Lime pie?”
To read Rick Blue's complete column on the West Island Gazette, click
here Rick Blue in the West Island Gazette |
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