Outdoors and the Cold

A Guest Post by SunKingpoet:

I’ve always loved the outdoors, but I’ve never been too partial to the cold. I just don’t get how someone can go out in weather below 60 degrees and actually be inspired to hike, raft, or bike. Come on, people. If your nipples are reaching for the sky like the wind is a mugger at the ATM, then it’s probably not a great day for a trip down the river.

Lucky for me, I live in Texas (and have for most of my adult and teen life). To say that we have warmer weather than most places here is an understatement to the Nth degree. Texas (especially south Texas) is hot my friends. It’s so hot here, you know that whole frying an egg on the pavement saying? Well it can actually happen in Texas. What do you think a sidewalk café is in our state? Okay, so I kid… only slightly.

Truth is, I dig the heat… love it in fact, but I happen to be married to a woman who must be part polar bear, because our house is kept so cold, there’s actually a glacial layer of ice on all of the linoleum floors. The kids and I use ice skates to get across the kitchen. Okay… well, maybe they’re more like socks and we don’t have our very own ice age taking place, but it is cold… really cold… that’s the point I’m trying to make.

Where was I going with this? Uhmmm… hold up, let me shuffle some thoughts around in my head.

Oh yeah, the cold and outdoors…

I’ve never been hunting. I’ve never had the desire. Though I’m an animal lover, I’m not a card carrying member of PETA (those folks scare the Hell out of me), and I’m not opposed to hunting for food if the need arises. However, I think I’d prefer pushing the shopping cart down the frozen food isle at the grocery store rather than sitting in a deer stand in the winter with deer urine on my boots and a sack of corn scattered across the grass. Let’s just say it’s not my idea of a good time.

I have been canoeing in the winter though, and let me tell you that that experience did nothing to make me lose my aversion to outdoor activities in the cold. It seems that somehow a pair of pretty eyes fluttered a bit and I lost complete control of my ability to think clearly agreeing to take a canoe down the Brazos River during a January cold spell. A canoe is not the most stable of boats with inexperienced drivers. Did you know this? Yeah, well, I wish you would have spoken up at the time. A dunking in the river, and a rather severe cold later, I made up my mind that if I was going to have a day outdoors, it was damn well going to be 70 degrees or more on the thermometer.

Whitewater Rafting?

What’s the weather report?

MTMD Responds:

Whitewater Rafting? What's the weather report? Who cares? My dear Sun King Poet, you're going to get wet anyway. Sun, Mist, Thunderstorm, Rain, Hurricane, Clouds...it's all good. If the water is high, the rapids are fast, and the waves are tall Whitewater Rafting is the best bang for your adventure dollar. In no other activity can you and a group of friends or family have wild fun, experience nature on a grand scale, be entertained by your guide/comedian/naturalist/historian/geologist. Add in the natural team building that results from running a whitewater river and you can also write off those thousands of dollars you were going to pay to Zig Ziglar.

The planet is 70% water. Our bodies are 70% water. Water = life. Granted, every once in a while you might want to have all that water baked out of you on a beach somewhere on a 100 degree day, but you know what you'll look like in your forties and fifties if all you do is soak up the sun--you've seen those men and women with their dried out sun-baked hides. How they look twenty years older than they really are. Don't plead ignorance, YOU KNOW. Whitewater Rafting is the ultimate in hydrating activities....and ONE MORE THING!

Ten Years of Whitewater rafting I've never had so much as a scratch! One game of softball and I have a separated shoulder. I'm telling you, whitewater rafting is good, clean, safe, hydrating fun!

Tell ya what: My Dear Sun King Poet, I invite you to West Virginia the third weekend in September for a trip on the Upper Gauley as my guest. The weather will be warm. The water will be warm, and the Gauley is one of the ten best whitewater rivers in the world. I guarantee an awesome time! And I make you this promise: Once you come over to the WET SIDE, there's just no going back.

Thanks for reading.