Tales of Freezing Nights 2

Tales of Freezing Nights 2: The trip to Melbourne

We had been driving all day as part of our family road trip to Melbourne and it was now around 8pm somewhere in the vastly unpopulated areas of Victoria getting slightly desperate for a place to spend the night. I don't know if you ever happen to have been piled into a car with your parents and two older brothers, squished in the middle seat and used a headrest for both siblings' pillows and subjected to 57 repeated plays of the same Neil Young songs for 8 hours while being faced with no source of dinner and no place to spend the night as you drive down a pitch black road that gradually becomes just a dirt road with no signs of life. When even Dad hit the point of being highly suspicious that the people at the "Stop.Revive.Survive" may have been mistaken in their directions to the nearest motel, we were getting a little worried. But no, a strange farmer who HAPPENED to be out checking his mail (at 8pm) pointed us a little further down the pitch black dirt road, promising that there was indeed a motel where we could rent a room and have dinner at the Tavern. Looking back, I would have had my suspicions that this was in fact some wanted murderer who works in tandem with the Survivor Reviver people to lure innocent families to their doom. But that's just cynical of me, here this lovely weird old man did indeed point us the right way and we ended up having dinner and getting a room.

Now here's when the blanket deprivation begins. I'll remind you that this was the dead of winter in Victoria, where it's freezing even in summer, and even with blankets it was that sort of cold where you feel like straightening your legs is like plunging them into ice water. We had a room with 2 double beds and one single. Mum and Dad took one double and Christian took the single while Nic and I were content to share the double. After the usual chatter we all eventually fell asleep.

It was around 1am when I awoke and felt like my feet were two blocks of ice. There was this incessant flashing light from a neon sign flickering through the curtains on my side of the bed and the air-conditioner unit would every now and again suddenly go

*CLICK!*HUMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!

...making it near impossible to relax. But none of that compared to the cold. I swear this is the coldest I have ever been. It was like the car trip on super arctic blasting air con mode. I was shivering so much but I was so sleepy I couldn't think of anything intelligent to do and my muscles wouldn't work. I couldn't understand why on earth the motel would only provide a flimsy threadbare sheet. Seriously this thing was the flimsiest sheet with a thread count of about 3 and what's more is I didn't even have enough of the sheet to cover my whole body! Most of it was trapped underneath or around Nic so I only had half my body under this god awful sheet. I tried feebly tugging on the sheet but this, no joke, resulted in Nic rolling so that EVEN MORE sheet was ripped away from me. I spent most of the night curled in a ball trying to pull threads of sheet over me shivering to my core with neon lights flashing in my face and the hum of the aircon unit keeping me constantly on the brink of my sanity (WHY would this need to be on?!? It definitely was NOT heating the room and if it was cooling the room I think I will cry). I finally fell asleep and had a horrible nights sleep, freezing cold and uncomfortable.

I woke up freezing in the morning and saw in the light: Nic with the entire sheet AND DOONA wrapped around him. THERE WAS A DOONA THIS WHOLE TIME! And he had so much doona he didn't even need it all! Half the doona was spilling onto the floor next to him completely going to waste and the rest was piled into mountains on top of his stupid warm body. I woke him up with a swift pillow to the head.

Winter Gods: 2 Lisa: 0

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Tales of Freezing Nights 1

Am I the only one who has these stories seeded with seething jealousy of people who were within metres of you in a warm bed while you were huddled in the foetal position shivering cursing whoever gave you such a poor excuse for a blanket? Either way it seems to have happened to me unnaturally many times. Here is the first in a set of tales about nights I have been frozen by the winter Gods...

Tales of Freezing Nights 1: The trip back from Cirque Du Soleil

It was around 12:30am by the time we set off from Brisbane to head home (about an hour and a half drive till I could bundle up in bed) with Christian driving, Nic in the front and me in the back seat. We all know the progression of the uncomfortable "I'm cold" sensation which is somehow magnified a bazillion times at night when all you want to do is go to bed. The feeling starts off small. A tingling on the ends of your toes as they start feeling a little uncomfortably numb, your nose feeling cold and slightly wet, your throat feeling a little dry from the air conditioning. You try to reposition yourself only to find you loose the trapped body heat you had tucked away in that position. You curse the sleeveless dress you chose to wear which, despite your most valiant and creative efforts, simply cannot be arranged in a way as to cover more surface area and provide a threadbare source of warmth. You attempt to huddle and pull your legs up onto the seat with you and fold your arms up against your chest, a position you are now stuck in because although you feel as though it is doing nothing to provide more heat, any movement seems to invite rushes of cold air to invade your precious cocoon of warmth. You may be wondering why I didn't simply turn the heater on. Ha, as though I had not thought of this already. I asked that very early on in the car trip for the heater to be turned on, only to be told it was broken. I later found out Christian had completely lied about this because he "liked it when the car was nice and cold." WHAT? SERIOUSLY!?!? (You cannot imagine my incredulous face right now as I recall the torment of this night and knowing he could have saved me all my suffering).

It was after about an hour I had hit the point of so uncomfortably cold that I could think of little else but visions of my bed, warm pyjamas, a heater and blankets. I was now curled up as tight as I could curl, wondering what I could use to cover myself up for some warmth. Now and again I'd drift a little and hit the FREEZING window and get jolted awake again. My only comfort was that at least poor Nic in the front seat must surely also be freezing and by sharing this frozen hell together I at least had a comrade who was in this battle with me. I actually felt really sorry for Nic because the front seat had the entire windscreen which seemed to radiate far more cold since Christian would periodically blast it with the aircon to keep it from fogging up. Yes, poor Nic, I consoled myself, at least we're in this together. But seriously where was the blanket that was usually ALWAYS in the back seat!??! This must have been the only time someone had removed it! I was actually starting to look at the seat cushioning and think how nice and warm I'd be if I ripped it from the seat and made myself a giant car-interior suit. I even made one huge move to check the boot through the back seat panel to see if maybe the blanket had been put in there or if there was ANYTHING I could use to provide some warmth. Result= empty mocking boot + ALL conserved body heat lost. The only thing that I had at my disposal was the reflector panel. You know those accordion looking things you put in the front window to keep the car cool? The end image was pretty depressing of me freezing, huddled in the corner wrapped in a car reflector mumbling to myself that we were nearly home and that at least Nic was going through this with me. Don't worry guys, I survived the night, the happy ending is me shakily making my way off to bed when we finally got home, cursing the winter gods and my dress and anything I could think of that had contributed to the entire freezing experience.

Oh and remember my one solace? "At least Nic's cold too". Well guess where the blanket was. Yeah. Nic wasn't cold at all. He had excess blanket wrapped around him, was warm and toasty and slept the entire way home.

Winter Gods: 1 Lisa: 0

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