Winter Solstice

5 Comments / biking

This is the most depressing time of year to be in the Pacific Northwest. Officially, the length of the day will be

8 hours, 26 minutes,
down from

15 hours, 59 minutes exactly six months ago. Seven and a half hours’ difference.. it’s like another day to work with.
For comparison, my folks in Texas currently have
10 hours and 13 minutes of daylight. (But they occasionally see flying cockroaches, so I guess it isn’t all great.)

Thank goodness tomorrow morning is Winter Solstice in the northern hemisphere. Days will finally start to get longer again (here’s why).

We had glorious weather on Thursday — clear, but cold. I biked to work for the first time in far too long. Even though I left early (at 4:00 p.m.), it was still pitch-black when I got home. I can’t wait for spring. I can’t wait for spring. I can’t wait for spring.

5 thoughts on “Winter Solstice”

  1. DougW

    Yep, it certainly takes some getting used to. I tell people it is the darkness that gets to me, not the rain.

    I’ve been riding at night pretty regularly. Tonight was quite nice, though we were definitely doing the clear and cold thing. Cruising around Mercer and other low traffic places at night is actually quite peaceful.

  3. tedder

    I actually like the change in seasons. Living in San Diego was hard because there was no natural “slow time of the year”.

    My body likes to partially hibernate in the winter. Summers are a good time for being active and busy.

  5. Woodstock

    It could be worse; you could live in Scotland. They had 6 hours and 59 minutes of daylight in Glasgow yesterday [grins evilly]

    What bugs me so much about this time of year is not the lack of light, though that is a real downer, but the forced joviality of the holiday season and how we try to celebrate the return of the light at the solstice (don’t get me started about the dogmatic disagreements on the time of year during which Christ was actually born) without acknowledging the creeping darkness that so frightened our ancestors.

    Either way, we start getting more daylight and right soon. 🙂

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