puma shoes

AH, SPRING: IT FINALLY ARRIVES

Sean Kirst, columnist

With the graceful stride of an experienced runner, Arek Robinson ran hard Sunday through Barry Park. That was hardly worth a second glance: A lot of people embraced the sunshine by going for a run.

What set Robinson apart was how fast he was going -- while carrying a rake.

"Actually, there is a story, " he said, after an onlooker flagged him down. Robinson, a member of the Le Moyne College cross country team, has cousins in Syracuse. Last fall, he borrowed one of their rakes.een retailer shirts Co. was one of the biggest winners in December. Then it snowed. Robinson did not have a shovel. He broke the rake using it to clear snow, which led to relentless kidding from his cousins about his reliability.

Sunday, the razzing began again when he asked to borrow another rake, and he vowed to hand-deliver it once he was done. The sun felt so good he decided to make the trip into a workout, and he planned on running another nine miles or so once he got the rake back to where it belonged.you can nike shox r4 mostly card transactions are rare.

"In the winter, you get clobbered living here, " Robinson said. "Everybody gets so down. But this is what it's all about, isn't it? Look at this. Everyone is outside."

Across Central New York, we might enjoy an occasional warm day in February or in March. Those respites, however, are almost painful in their pleasure: Within hours, the sun is gone and the gentle wind turns bitter.

Sunday was different, with its blue skies and sunshine hot enough to burn your face. The forecast calls for seasonable temperatures all week. That will take us into mid-April. Sunday, then, became that pivotal day in the year when people finally believe:

Winter, at least for the most part, is over.

"Today, we were out walking, and we said a day like this is the whole reason we live here, " said Tom Nabinger, who with Melanie Stevens lives on Lewis Avenue in DeWitt. "How can you appreciate this if you don't live through our January or February?"

He leaned against a car and watched as his 7-year-old niece, Guine, and 5-year-old nephew, Aidan, climbed a tree with a few of their friends. Guine eventually jumped down and offered her own take on the weather:

"In winter it's really snowing and you just stay inside and play with your toys or watch TV, and it gets really borrrring, " she said, drawing out the word as only a 7-year-old can. "On a day like this you can go outside and climb trees."

Which she did.

It was the kind of weather that made you think about packing away the corduroys. It also was perfect for a ritual of spring that Adelle Moore, of DeWitt,shop Shoes And a greater appreciation goes to the wonderful people who accept and love me the way I am. embraced for simple reasons, even if others see it as a fashionable act of "green" consciousness:

Moore put out her wet laundry to dry in the wind.

"There's just something nice about it,Why not snap on a brightly embroidered shirt and wear your skinniest jordan tucked into high-heeled boots? something about the smell of clothes dried on the line, " she said.

It is another piece of the hard-earned pleasure of a Central New York spring. Life in Florida or Arizona can be similar to eating so much chocolate it loses its taste: Sunshine is nice, but constant sun gives up its charm.

In Upstate New York, "charm" hardly did justice to Sunday. We were finally able to comfortably go outside without a jacket after a winter -- a relatively mild winter, by our standards -- that still dropped more than nine feet of snow on Syracuse.

"This is why you live here, for days like this, " said Dean Foti, whose house is up the street from Nabinger and Stevens. Foti walked across his yard, scooping up croquet mallets, a skateboard and a basketball that his children and their friends left on the grass.

To him, it was sheer joy, not a duty.

"You get through winter just waiting for a day like today, and it happens to come on a Sunday, so every kid on the block is outside playing. Nothing organized; they're all just out here playing, " Foti said. "I think sometimes we organize their lives too much. To just be out here the way they're out here,Good luck out there be safe and drive nikeairmaxss. that's what a neighborhood is all about."

Danny Massard saw the warm sun as a physical rebirth. He describes himself as "a neighborhood help man" on the South Side of Syracuse. He'll rake or do yard work in cold weather, if there's no choice.

He much prefers working in conditions like Sunday's, when he stopped to talk over the fence with some friends, Parmalee and Dale Rasmussen. "This turns back the clock of time, " Massard said, gesturing at the sky. "I'm 54, but I sure don't feel like I'm 54 today."

A few years ago, the Rasmussens bought a boarded-up house on a historic part of South Salina Street. They also purchased two adjacent empty lots, which they've made into a vast, eye-catching garden that includes a pond for koi.

Parmalee is a children's photographer, and the city recently gave her a variance to work from her home. She and Dale were outside Sunday, readying their garden for a bloom in coming weeks. By June, they said, it will provide both a perfect backdrop for photos and a statement on how they feel about their neighborhood.

As for the weather, Parmalee summed it up for most of us:

"It says, 'Oh my God. I have to be outside.'"