ShareThisMost people who live in New England like to escape to places like Florida in the winter.
Then there are the few who, in the face of freezing weather, become irrational. They go to where it's even colder.
These people are commonly referred to as "skiers."
There is a subspecies that is even odder. They ski when it's below zero.
They say that a recent weekend was one of the coldest in New England in years. It was 10 below in Vermont and New Hampshire with a wind-chill of perhaps 20 below.
So I went skiing.
You may ask, "Why?"
I have no idea.
You know those people who bicycle to work in winter or go ice fishing in Michigan? I think they are insane. I sometimes think this even as I struggle into my ski boots.
It usually takes an hour or so to get suited up on subzero mornings. You begin with long underwear with high-tech names like Thermostat, Polartec or Capilene and add thick ski pants and jackets made out of things like Dermizax, whatever that is. You know you are dressed right for subzero weather when you can no longer move.
But you are not done. Now you have to add chemical heat packs that stay warm for six hours. They have special ones that are supposed to lie flat in the toe area of your ski boot, but by the time you jam your foot in, they bunch up like beanbags.
You also put the packs in your mittens to make it harder to hold onto ski polls.
Now you are almost set to go skiing.
All you need now is a thick, skintight neoprene hood and neck cover with a face hole, but on subzero days, it's best to add a Neofleece mask over your mouth and nose. Your eyes can't be exposed, either, so then you put on goggles. Over your helmet, of course. At this point, you are slightly more sealed up and immobile than an Ebola investigator in a Level-4 biohazard suit.
Then you sprain three fingers clamping your boots and, finally, you are ready to go enjoy your sport.
Remember the stiff, mechanical way the robot walked in the original "The Day the Earth Stood Still"? That's how skiers walk as they clomp down the stairs of the base-lodge to buy their $75 lift ticket. That's for one day. This is why you can't quit no matter how cold you are.
If you wanted to make people on a winter mountain as frozen as possible, you'd design a device that dangles them 30 feet in the air while moving them uphill against the wind. They actually have invented such an apparatus. It's called a chairlift.
The more modern ones shift to a slow track when they pick you up so you can get aboard easily, but most mountains have older ones that fly into the back of your knees, giving you one-tenth of a second to sit down and hold onto the center pole for dear life as the chair takes off. No matter how many years you've skied, it's a terrifying moment.
You spend the ride up hunched into your coat wondering why you didn't put on more layers. By the time you've skied down, with all the exertion, you are wondering why you put on so many layers. Skiing in subzero weather involves the odd contrast of feeling overheated underneath while getting frostbite if your face cover slips even a half-inch.
There is also the dreaded "gauntlet." Ski mountains love to make snow on freezing days, and, I think, out of amusement they line snow cannons along the narrowest slopes to coat you as you go by. Also, there seems to be a competition between ski cannons and jet engines over which can be louder.
Perhaps the most fun part of subzero Eastern skiing is that mountains here boast of something the huge, perfect Western mountains lack: ice. Crusty snow is one thing; at least you can get a ski edge into that. But often, Eastern slopes have patches of smooth, rock-hard ice. This is one reason they say so many Olympic skiers come from the East. You have to be good to ski on ice.
I am not good. It's my belief that Eastern skiing boosts religion since people start believing in prayer on its slopes. It is worse if you have teen-age sons who have gone over to the dark side of snowboarding. I learned the hard way not to follow them as they enjoy jumping off steep cliffs.
Finally, if it's too cold, the lodge is always there, so you can break early and get a cafeteria lunch of a burger, fries and Coke for only $23, that is, if you can find a table for six, which is what two people need for themselves and their gear.
After a weekend of this, I finally got back home.
I went to work the next day, and en route, saw a bicyclist ride by ... in 25-degree weather.
Can you believe that?
Some people are crazy.
(Reach Mark Patinkin at mpatinkin(at)projo.com. For more stories, visit scrippsnews.com.)
Must credit The Providence Journal
