It didn't occur to me until after I'd shoveled a few paths through the foot deep snow hereabouts that it was cold out there today. It wasn't of course since I was at the idiot end of the idiot stick but my dad gave me a valuable lesson all those long years ago when he decided that our future lay in winning the Frostbiting Series at the Newport Yacht Club.
The boats were small, about 10 feet long and it was just one person per boat so it wasn't all that crowded but you didn't notice on account of the boat's own personal swell that swept back and forth over the bottom which was roughly where one's butt was back then unless you were up on the rail and hiking out for all you were worth so the damned thing wouldn't tip over, again, and pitch you into the arctic waters of Aquidneck Bay.
So anyway, the 30 wonderful years I spent living in California might have seen me with a shovel in my hands no more than half a dozen times and those were at my parents house in Virginia or possibly in Pennsylvania but never in sunny southern California or even in the Bay Area. I mean, I didn't even own a shovel. Nobody did! It goes without saying that the years spent in the middle east were snow free and rarely even troubled by rain but when it did come it stayed for awhile because drainage was as foreign to them as peaceful coexistence.
Still, it might take my friends awhile to grasp the fact that I very rarely ever feel cold because I have never again come close to experiencing the cold that came with sailing a dinghy in winter storms with snow coming down by the megaton as the boat fills with water and some R#$GS! is shouting "Starboard!" at me.
So, raise your kids right and get them involved in frostbite sailing and racing at as young an age as possible. They'll thank you for it for the rest of their lives.
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