Any good heist movie or thriller includes a signature scene where our heroes choose their weapons. You know the scene: The ragtag group has gathered for one last job. The leader pulls up the door of a storage unit or opens a car trunk or unearths a box buried in the backyard or pushes a button that slides back a wall revealing a hidden room. Then they make their selections.
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Who gets the grenade launcher? Who gets the M-16? Who gets the plasma gun?
You can find this scene as far back as “The Iliad,” when Odysseus can’t decide between the spear or the sword — so he takes them both.
And it’s a scene that was played out last week all around Washington, not with guns, but with winter clothes.
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The DMV is not as cold as the coldest parts of the USA or as hot as the hottest. It’s not as snowy as the snowiest or as windy as the windiest. We get a little bit of everything, weather-wise. That’s what can make choosing outerwear so maddening.
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A snowstorm of the sort we had last week — the first one, I mean — is relatively easy. You want something warm that’s also dry. I have a pair of black, Wellington-style insulated boots. A thick pair of socks and I’m good to go, treading the snow with the dog as my boots make that satisfying skrik-skrik sound in the powder underfoot.
But what is perfect one day can be imperfect the next. The day warms, the snow melts. The night cools, the slush freezes. My black boots won’t keep me from slipping on the ice.
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So now I pull out my hiking boots and strap on a product called Yaktrax. Coiled wires attach with Velcro and rubber webbing to the soles of my boots. They bite into the ice: crampons for suburbanites.
Every time I walk on ice, I remember an old neighbor who was a veteran of the war in Korea, where soldiers and Marines battled the elements as much as the enemy. When he saw me slipping and sliding on our icy street, he showed me how to tie a sock around the instep of my boots, providing a little more traction. It’s what they did in Korea, he said.
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My Yaktrax help me navigate the ice on my morning dog walk. But then the weather warms some more. Now the streets are clear. Not only are my amateur crampons superfluous, they slip around on the bare pavement. So, take them off?
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Well, not all of the snow and ice is gone. Some of the places I walk are still icy. The path is shaded or the snow so compressed by pedestrians that it’s turned into a slippery sheet. Sure, I could avoid these places, but the dog must be walked.
So I rely on my knowledge of frozen water in its myriad states. If the ice is still topped with a dusting of snow, there’s usually enough traction to tread on it in hiking boots. If the ice is rucked up into jagged ridges, I can proceed with caution.
By the time the temperature stays above freezing, you can wear pretty much anything on your feet — as long as you don’t mind it getting muddy.
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There’s an old saying that goes, “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes.” Of course, even our recent chills haven’t approached the frigid depths in other parts of the country.
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My sister-in-law Sarah in Evanston, Ill., said: “It’s not really cold until it stays below 20 degrees all day long. And frankly, it is better when it is that cold since you have none of this melt-refreeze ice stuff and a sense of penetrating humid cold.”
Sarah said the subfreezing temperatures where she lives require the “rule of three”: three layers on every part of your body, from head to toe.
And what of Archie, the reason I’m out in all kinds of weather in the first place? Unlike our old dog, Archie is not a great fan of the snow. While our old dog, Charlie, delighted in it — taking great mouthfuls of powder as we walked along — Archie sees snow as something to be endured.
It may be that he’s mortified by the orange fleece we wrap him in when the temperature drops below freezing. But he puts up with it. Neither snow nor ice will keep him from his appointed rounds. Archie squares his shoulders, lowers his head and walks on, certain that spring is on the way.
Read more from John Kelly.