Day 24: the Gear issue.

Snow Chains, for your feet

Enough about math, for a bit.  I'm living, breathing, eating, sleeping, talking, thinking, dreaming math.  Let's talk about gear, cause that is one thing I've done *right* on this venture (huge kudos to my mother's Christmas assistance, Joe's sage gear advice, KK's awesome distance-shopping assistance).  I noticed on the walk in, this morning, despite it being 7º F, that I was comfortable.  Whereas in Portland I was often really uncomfortably cold at 35º or 40º.  I think there's something about it hitting a certain level of dangerously cold that we give in to the urge to attack the cold with good winter gear and get comfortable, whereas if it's just chilly we tough-up and suffer through.  The gear I have is ridiculously good, and I wish I could go back to childhood me and give me gear half this good (did they have "OMNI-HEAT" when I was a baby?).  I'm like a walking advertisement for Columbia Sportswear.  Some highlights:

-My boots plug in.  I use a USB-mini cable (the same one that charges my Kindle, and wow am I starting to sound like a Yuppie)  to plug them into the wall or my computer overnight, and then I can power them on and have little heating elements in my boots keeping my toes warm.  Ridiculous?  Maybe.  When it's -30º with wind chill, I'm willing to be ridiculous.  My walk in is about a mile, and I don't feel a strong need to martyr myself on the walk to prove my manhood.

-My snowpants and parka (and boots) are all OMNI-HEAT, which means the inside is covered in little silver tin-foil looking circles, that result in a fairly lightweight jacket (that doesn't do a lot of warming when you first put it on) or pants or boots, which trap your body heat and heat up incredibly fast.  Less useful for sitting on a cold snowmobile and being whizzed around (where you don't build up body heat).  Incredibly good for walking to work.

-I bought, from a student who made it, a hat trimmed with wolf fur.  It is one of the warmest hats I've ever owned, and comfortable too.  Also, wolf.  That he shot.  Like a wolf wolf.  

-I spent the first week here slip-sliding around on the ice every time it warmed up or got windy enough to blow the layer of snow off the ice.  This is something I remember from childhood, and thought we just have to deal with (take short steps, try to roll with any slide so you don't throw out your back keeping on your feet).  Not so!  Yak-trax, a snow-chain that attaches to your boot, let you walk on ice without sliding at all.  

Overall, having the right gear makes -40º no more unpleasant than 50º, I'm finding.  If anything, more so.  If you give in to the desire to just bundle up because you're dealing with temperatures where frostbite is a clear and present issue, you end up more comfortable than out in the rainy blustery 40º Portland weather in a windbreaker.

Once again, loving life up here.  Had a great birthday, tell you all about it later.  For now just wanted to check in really quickly while my students were plugging away on a practice test.