Looking Out: There's nothing crazy about having fun in the cold
“What in the world are you doing?” says Cassandra, one of my neighbors. She’s pulled up in her car near where I’m working to retrieve my hat from the bag on my bicycle.
“Getting my hat out,” I say, holding it up as I unclip my helmet and switch from hard hat to Stormy Kromer soft hat.
“Yes, but what are you doing out here on a bicycle today?” she asks.
“I’m going sledding with my grandkids,” I say.
“It’s not a very nice day for a bike ride,” she says. “But it would be good for sledding if it weren’t so cold and windy.”
She waves and drives off, shaking her head.
This isn’t my first bike trip in rather cool conditions. Every day since my grandchildren arrived for a visit, I’ve ridden to the sledding hill to enjoy the experience with them. There hasn’t been room in the car for my children, grandchildren, a small part of my sled collection and me. So I ride my bike on the snow-covered roads.
Yesterday, my friend Sigmund not only stopped his car in the middle of the road to ask me if I had lost my marbles, but he took a photo and then sent it to a bunch of our mutual friends. He captioned the photo with news about 6-degree temperatures and 25-mph winds, signing off with something about mental health.
He was kinder than Sharky who, from his home in too-hot Florida, compared my mental state to bat excrement.
“Hey, it’s warmer than it was yesterday, when it was zero degrees and the wind was blowing 30 mph,” I responded.
Another friend from Florida who spent her earlier life in Brazil makes it clear that she thinks taking my grandchildren sledding in such weather constitutes child abuse, and freezing to death riding a bicycle in the snow in such temperatures is punishment well-deserved. I know for a fact that she considers anything below 60 degrees to be freezing. What’s wrong with her, anyway?
As I write this, my rosy-cheeked grandchildren, ages 3, 4, 8 and 10 are with me in the warm house, happily occupied in various ways. They have had a wonderful time playing in the snow, all bundled up in begged, borrowed and purchased winter clothing. They all live in Florida where a sweatshirt is the ultimate cold-weather gear and definitively not up to northern standards, even for me. (I’m convinced that my mother had a recessive gene from a penguin and my father one from a polar bear. Both landed in my genome.)
Shoveling snow, cross-country skiing, hiking and, yes, biking in the cold and snow are high on my list of fun stuff to do.
But nothing pleases me more than riding a sled down a hill. Having my grandchildren along for the ride boosts the feeling even more. Always being the oldest kid on top of the hill doesn’t bother me a bit. The other children standing there with their plastic sleds, looking at my antique Flexible Flyer or my even older German-style sled with its wooden frame probably wonder how I’ll ever make it down the hill in one piece.
When I pass them halfway down the hill, going faster and farther, they timidly ask if they can take a ride on my old sled. Of course, I let them. Standing at the top of the windy hill watching children having fun on a sledding hill is the best.
Standing there when the temperature is zero and the wind is howling does limit how long the fun can last. I’ll admit that.
Just this once.
Jim Whitehouse lives in Albion.
This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Jim Whitehouse: There's nothing crazy about having fun in the cold
