Enjoy the Cold, New England Style

Writing in the Providence Journal, Mark Patinkin channels Dave Barry with an ode to cold. Here’s an excerpt:

Most 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 last 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.

Patinkin enjoys skiing, so he’s milking the apparent “insanity” of skiing for all its worth. By the way, most of what he says applies to snowboarding as well, with this exception:

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.

Count that as an advantage for snowboarding: You can actually walk in your boots.

Patinkin also makes a riff on reckless snowboarders. But he’s talking about his teenaged sons, which means that their attitude stems from their age more than anything else. I wonder if Patinkin knows any snowboarders his own age.

Here’s a link to the article, though you may need to sign up for a free account to read it.