I’ve made no secret of my secret abiding irrational fear of The Gloaming, that horrible gunmetal-gray time of day when the sky turns the color of Kaopectate and my circadian rhythms go into a tailspin and I begin to feel as if I’m living in Norway, with access to none of that country’s wonderful things [1] and all of its bad ones [2].

Despite having grown up just a few latitudes south of Minneapolis, with all the various horrors and joys of Midwestern winters inculcated in me from birth, I am beginning to fear that I have some latent form of Seasonal Affective Disorder which is slowly but surely getting worse every winter. The Gloaming never used to bother me; in fact, I embraced it as a child because it meant coming in from playing in the snow and drinking hot chocolate and watching TV. [3] It meant dinner. Even in college I didn’t mind it so much because I didn’t really appreciate sunlight anyway, holed up as I was in some corner of the library or convalescing with friends in the soulless artificial light of the dining hall.

Indeed, it seems like getting through the winter used to be much easier. For most of my twenties my winter survival strategies used to lean pretty heavily on music and drinking and a general embrace of the sedentary lifestyle, especially during the long January-February stretch. But these last couple winters I’ve been horrified to realize that none of that will cut it anymore. [4]

Maybe it has something to do with getting older. Maybe it’s because I’ve turned into one of those assholes who goes running every day, so now I appreciate the time I’m able to spend outdoors during the spring, summer, and fall. Maybe it’s because I’ve also turned into one of those assholes who rides his bike everywhere, so I resent the extra steps and layers that winter cycling requires. I can still do both of those things—run and ride my bike—but it’s not as effortless, or as warm.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m not thrilled about the daily jogging and biking thing. I’m one of those assholes, but I’m by no means proud of it. It kind of pisses me off, in fact: all that effort and energy and moisture-wicking fabric expended in the service of maintaining even a baseline level of happiness (BLH), and it’s certainly not as immediately gratifying or decadent or socially stimulating as, say, drinking and sleeping.

But it appears to be my only recourse, for now. Which is why it is the first and most crucial component of my Winter Survival Strategy, a many-pronged regimen of BLH-maintenance I’ve developed with the help of others who suffer similarly. I’ve named this component:

Exercise, Unfortunately.

This means I have to go running outside, in temperatures as low as 20°F, wearing three or four layers up top and two down below and those sissified wool gloves that sissies wear. And, sometimes, something called a neck gator.

It means that when I ride my bike I will be wearing the aforementioned layers and gator, along with wool socks [5], fancy futuristic gloves over my aforementioned sissy gloves, a headband, a hat, a helmet, an extra jacket [6], and goggles. That’s right, goggles. Like, the kind that normal people wear to go skiing but that assholes wear to ride bikes. It means I will buy different-sized bike tubes so I can switch out my road tires and put my snow tires on.

So that does it for biking. But I still want to run [7], and when the temperature drops below 20°F [8], I will take my regimen indoors, because I am resolutely not a badass (just an asshole). Now, just where does one go running in Minneapolis in the winter?

In the Metrodome, apparently. That’s right: the place where the Twins and the Vikings, two professional teams of sports players, sometimes play. What I discovered just recently is that the upper deck of the stadium is opened twice a week to assholes who want to run in circles on it, for just $1 a visit. 2.5 laps around the stadium = one mile, which means I can run my minimum distance of 3 miles in just 7.5 laps. Emily and Maryhope and I tried this recently. I turned on my fancy iPhone-based GPS for Assholes so I could keep track of our distance, and our afternoon looked like this:

The novelty of running in the Metrodome sustained us for about three laps, and then we just got kind of bored. [9] In the end, we decided it was the sort of thing we’d be content to do maybe once a month.

But once a month isn’t going to cut it [10] if I’m going to maintain a daily BLH. This is how I found myself standing in the lobby of the Downtown Minneapolis YMCA, gatored and goggled, applying for a membership. The YMCA offers income-based memberships on a sliding scale, and since my income is four dollars a month, they were willing to slide pretty far for me. The good news is that soon everybody will be able to get great bargains on income-based memberships because everyone will be laid off.

So that’s where I am right now. Well, not right now: right now I’m sitting in a coffeeshop on the west edge of downtown, watching the snow fall while my sweat- and spit-moistened neck gator dries off. In a little while I will activate tonight’s component of my Winter Survival Strategy, which will involve putting on my gator and goggles and riding a few blocks west to the YMCA and running on the treadmill for 45 minutes, then sitting in the sauna far too long, then seeing if I can get from the Y’s third floor to the downtown Target via the Skyway, just to see if I can. Such is the modest extent of my enterprising spirit right now. It is winter, after all.

[1] (functional public healthcare, Annie)

[2] (four months of near-constant darkness, lutefisk)

[3] (the MTV Top 20 Countdown hosted by Adam Curry; Double Dare)

[4] “It” referring here to “the mustard.”

[5] (also for sissies)

[6] (or “thermal shell,” if you’re an asshole)

[7] Or not “want to run” but rather “need to run if I don’t want to hate myself, life, and God around about the time The Gloaming commences”

[8] (which will happen in Minneapolis approximately now, and continue until the second week of May)

[9] Running past a deserted nacho cart seven times is Kafkaesque but hardly exhilarating.

[10] See note #4 supra.