Autumn in Cincinnati.

It's beautiful outside. Trees are changing colors, everyone's layering; gloves, scarves, boots all out from now until April when Spring trickles over the midwest. The summer humidity hangs around in small pockets like a will-o-the-wisp, sudden slow fingers of warmer air interrupting the steady cold.

I'm ill prepared for the change in weather. Between a single pea coat, a corduroy blazer, two old sweaters and numerous cotton t-shirts my wardrobe reminds that it needs updating with every chilly morning. Morning bike rides result in slow fingertip death from a creeping chill followed by massive swelling when I walk into any heated area. My clothes are like cheesecloth against the wind. I happily told one of my classmates that I was ordering a windproof coat and he told me that he owned six - and that all of them were bigger than me.

Six heavy winter jackets. If he'd said that in Southern California he'd be laughed at all the way to the ocean. And then buried in wet sand and left for drowning by the rising tide, murdered by the scorn of the semi-desert, sunshine state.