Dawn

I see of a lot of dawn mornings in the summertime. It's so hot here May to October that you're likely to kill yourself off if you try to ride after around 11:00 a.m. Dawn in the winter is a whole other thing though.

I had a lesson on Sunday, but because of Super Bowl festivities, we needed to get it done first thing in the morning. That sounds great in a text, lesson at 8:00 a.m.?, but in real life, predawn grooming and tacking up is not fun. The sun doesn't even rise here until 6:54 a.m., but because of the nearby mountains, you can't even see the sun until an hour later.

As a Californian, my it's really cold meter runs on a different scale than what most of you deal with. Even so, 38 degrees is cold no matter where you live. It felt even colder considering that it was 70 the afternoon before.

With fingers stiff and burning, I powered through. By the time my lesson actually started, the sun had peeked over the mountain, warming us all. 

It almost made me long for summer's warmth. Almost.