In Which I Don’t See the Armed Snowman

Sun illuminates the clouds and shines through holes in them this morning, view from C Avenue.

J Term 2018 is over and also not over. I’m still grading, which makes me green with envy over some other professors’ Twitter happy dances. But, I’m getting there.

I taught a speech course this winter term—at Mount Mercy University, where I teach, there is a 3-week January term when students usually take just one class, and professors teach just one. For four hours a day, four days a week. It’s not exactly a mid-winter vacation.

Anyway, classes ended Monday, and I entered final exam grades today. And with the January term classes now done, it was nice to have a little foreshadowing of spring today. We’ve had lots of weather extremes this winter, with a relatively warm December followed by snowy, icebox January, with some breaks now and then.

Today was now and then. While it was cloudy and cool, it was also dry, with dry enough pavement that I greased the chain and pumped up the tyres on Clarence, my workhorse hybrid bike, for the commute to campus this morning and the continuation of gradefest 2018.

I like a nice sunny sky, but I appreciate clouds, at least if they aren’t completely unbroken. And this morning, the sun was playing a game with this bike commuter, peeking out now and then through interstices in the cloud layer. As you can see, the view on my morning ride, while winter stark, still featured a bit of interest from the sky. It also just felt good to be on the "regular" bike, which allows me to extend my legs more. And while The Fancy Beast is a decent mountain bike, a hybrid is just a much livelier ride.

I teach a core education verbal communication class, with a long unit on public speaking. During the final exam, I usually have students view a speech and apply course concepts to it—and I often use a TED talk as the exam speech, honestly because they have readily available transcripts.

For this January term, I used a speech by Gavin Pretor-Pinney, founder of The Cloud Appreciation Society. You have to watch his talk for the headline to make sense—when the sun just peeks through a few holes in the water vapor ceiling, there aren’t that many shapes in the clouds. But a biker still has plenty of time outside to look up and appreciate the variety of textures in even a mostly cloudy sky.

When I’m scrambling to catch up on grading and worried about the mountain of work awaiting me for the spring term that starts too soon, and which I don’t have time to prep for, perhaps it’s selfish to take the time to ride a bicycle to campus.

I could get there 15 minutes faster via car. But I would not see the clouds as well nor appreciate them as much. And I agree with Gavin. That would be a shame.