Springier

I certainly hope we have finally turned that corner and there will be no more winter weather.  I read that this is only the third time since 1940 that Toronto has gotten more snow than Montreal.  So history.  Yea...

There were so many days in late Jan. and Feb. that I felt like this:

Maybe it was even worse last weekend when there was just a thin coat of slush that then turned back to snow.  This was so depressing after the slightly warmer weather.  In fact, the slush on Friday felt so dangerous that I skipped going to the gym and went Saturday morning instead.

However, it has been warming up since Wednesday and most, though not all, snow in the yard has melted.  We were actually able to just wear shoes on a quick trip to Ottawa, which I'll discuss a bit more in the next post, and that was a nice surprise.

I've actually managed to start biking to work on a regular basis, though I'll have to carve out some time to drop the bike off for a tune up.  They told me last time that I needed to replace the chain, but that I might as well try to make it last through the winter, rather than replacing it and having it get rusty right away.

I suspect it will be a bit harder to keep up with my reading, but, on the whole, I'd rather have the exercise (and avoid taking the TTC as much as possible).  On the train ride up and back from Ottawa I managed to read the book on autonomous vehicles (that I am reviewing for the Journal of Urban Affairs) and got to the halfway mark in Crime and Punishment, so that was most excellent.  

While I would have loved to get to St. Petersburg to take a Dostoevsky tour (and even more to visit the State Hermitage Museum), I don't think that is likely to be in the cards.  One of my colleagues in Cambridge went to Moscow and St. Petersburg in 2005, and I halfway contemplated it at the time, though even then it was still trickier for Americans to get visas to visit Russia.  Nonetheless, it didn't feel so morally awful (back then) to be supporting Putin in any way.  For me, the red line was the annexation of Crimea in 2014.  All I can really hope for now is that Putin does face meaningful punishment for his global crimes, though the odds of that are slim.  Nonetheless, they are certainly better now than they were 3 weeks ago, given how badly his campaign is going, and it is at least plausible that he will be removed from power within the next 5 years.  One can only hope.  And obviously hope that the next leader of Russia isn't such a monster and may actually allow a freer society, though I think that is an extremely unlikely outcome.  I've reconciled myself to never visiting China, and I imagine Russia will probably essentially be off-limits as well for the rest of my lifetime at least.

Anyway, I'm about to bike home in the last of the daylight.  I should focus on how that will feel so good compared to the winter biking I attempted on occasion -- and I shouldn't let myself get too down over things that I have no control over...