My relationship with the snow and cold weather is about as complicated and love/hate as it can get. Winter in the Midwest is not holly and jolly all the time like in the movies. Don't get me wrong I love Christmas, Hanukkah, and all the other holidays during the winter season and there's no denying that the snow and cold plays a key role in adding flavor to the festivities. Think of how many holiday songs there are about winter wonderland and dashing through the snow. It's part of the holiday spirit, and it would be ideal if it showed up for a couple of weeks during the holidays and then disappeared. But it doesn't work like that. During my time growing up in Michigan and living in Chicago during my pre-California years as an adult, winter never went away after the holiday festivities died down; it lingered all the way until mid to late March, and although it was fun during the holidays, it quickly lost it's jolliness once New Years was over. Imagine having to bundle up in a heavy coat, shoes, and socks just to do something like go to your car to get something. Or how about having no electricity for five days because a snow storm damaged your power lines? Or how about having to go outside in the morning ten minutes before leaving for work or school to start your car and let it warm up so by the time you leave it's barely warm enough so you won't freeze your ass off during the ride? Or how about having to spend five minutes scraping ice and snow off your car windows so you can see while you're driving? And let's not forget spending up to two hours shoveling your sidewalk and driveway after a snowstorm and having school called off because the roads are too icy. To all the native Californians reading this: Yes, this is how it really is! When I went away to college at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo things were even more gnarly. Due to it's proximity to Michigan's west coast, Kalamazoo gets hit with lake effect snow coming off Lake Michigan. I didn't think there was anywhere in the world that was colder and more snowy than Michigan. Then I moved to Chicago when I was twenty-two. And man, was I wrong. I loved living in Chicago, but their winters are on whole other level. In addition to lake effect snow, the constant winds coming off Lake Michigan create a ridiculously strong wind chill factor. I learned quickly during my first winter there that I had foolishly underestimated how cold it can get. People have described Chicago as having "two seasons: winter and July" and have referred to Chicago winters as "never ending". One morning during my commute to work on the blue line train, I was reading an article in the Chicago RedEye in which the author wrote "our winters suck, but we tolerate them charmingly". "No we don't! Not all of us" I said to myself out loud. Another thing I found distasteful was all the people who walked their dogs and instead of throwing away their poo bags, they would bury them in the snow banks along the sides of the streets. The real fun would come in late winter when the snow was melting and there would be bags of dog shit everywhere. Not everyone shared my sentiment about winter. Most notably, my two colleagues Adina and Tanja, who sat in close proximity to me at work. Although Tanja didn't necessarily love winter, she generally thought it was pleasant and accepted it as being part of Chicago's four distinct seasons. Adina, on the other hand, once said "call me a freak, but I love this. I hope we get snowed in". Nevertheless, both of them put up with my constant griping during the winter months for three years, for which I'll always be grateful. One day in February of 2011, the National Weather Service advised that they were expecting two feet of snow to fall over the next couple of days as a heavy storm passed through. "Yeah right" I thought. "It doesn't snow like that here". They weren't exaggerating. The storm ripped through and dumped just over twenty inches of snow in the city in less than twenty-four hours. I woke up the next morning in total disbelief. Forget going to work. Chicago's typically efficient commuter trains were barely functional and completely overcrowded. "My move to Los Angeles can't come soon enough" I thought. I sat on the couch, opened my laptop, and continued my ongoing hunt for jobs in Los Angeles in a desperate attempt to get out of this frozen hell and live my California dream.
Although winter wasn't my favorite season in the Midwest, I did what I could to make the best of it. I chose to adopt the "when life gives you lemons" mentality and enjoy it as much as I could. As a kid, I loved riding my bike, swimming, and playing tennis and baseball in the summer. When winter rolled along, I enjoyed bowling as an indoor activity, but the winter also presented a different brand of outdoor fun. Once the snow started falling, my friends and I would spend weekend days and evenings having snowball fights, playing on the snowbanks, and sledding down the hill at the local park until we got too cold. One day when I was ten, my parents' friends Gale and Gina, who I respectively refer to as Uncle Gale and Aunt Gina, came over to our house and Uncle Gale asked me out of the blue if I wanted to go skiing with him that weekend. Even though I had never skied before, I agreed to join. All I knew about skiing was what I had seen in Dumb and Dumber, which was my favorite comedy movie of all time, and still is today. I watched that excerpt of the movie (and laughed a ton) a handful of times in anticipation for my first skiing adventure. Although he was an accomplished skier, Uncle Gale had the patience to spend the day on the bunny hill with me at Mount Holly while I learned how to shred. Despite causing a pile up on the tow rope and falling quite a bit, I managed to get the hang of it and when it was time to go home I didn't want to leave. I was having too much fun. The day I learned how to downhill ski was game-changing for me and from then on, I went as often as I could. In addition to sledding, I now had skiing, and I always looked forward to it when I had the opportunity to go. A few years later I decided to abandon skiing in favor of snowboarding, and although my tailbone was so sore that first day that I could barely sit down, it quickly became my favorite winter sport, and I've been doing it ever since. I eventually joined "ski club", which was an eight-week program through school where we would go skiing after school at Mount Holly every Wednesday night. We would get on the bus and head to the ski hill, shred for four hours while having a free meal in the lodge, then head back to school on the bus around 9 PM and our parents would pick us up. During my freshman year at Western, there was a slope outside of my dorm building that descended into a valley. My friends and I built a small jump out of snow on the hill, and we'd sometimes go off it after having too much to drink, waking up the next morning hungover and sore from landing improperly. On cold winter weekend nights, before beginning our walk to a house party, we would always tell each other to "put on your liquid long johns". Meaning, just get drunk, and you won't be able to feel how cold it really is outside. Because I lived in the city, I didn't snowboard as often while living in Chicago, however following a discussion about winter sports at work, Adina invited me to go skiing with her, her family, and her friends in Wisconsin. I joined them a handful of times on ski trips and it was always enjoyable. I would hop on the train with my snowboard, get off at the last stop in the suburbs, they would meet me at the train station, and we'd head up to Wisconsin. After spending hours on the slopes, we would sit in the lodge eating schnitzel, and I would listen to their stories about skiing the mountains in their native hometown in Romania in between shots of bourbon.
I never realized how much I appreciated snow and winter until I came to California in the spring of 2012. The first time I snowboarded down a real mountain in Big Bear Lake I was terrified at first, but after that first run, I was having a blast. Up until then, I had grown up shredding at Mount Holly and other resorts in Michigan, which had no more than 400 feet of vertical drop. Now I was carving down an 8,000 foot mountain with thousands of feet of drop, which was equally as game-changing as my first time skiing as a ten year old. This was the real deal. Snow sports have always been a part of my life, but after seven years of boarding down mountains in California, I've gained a new understanding of how much of an impact snow sports have had on my life as an outdoor enthusiast. This impact was especially apparent during my first few trips to Mammoth Mountain, which was unlike any place I had ever been. I'll never forget my first time seeing that 360 view of the Minarets and the surrounding snowy mountain peaks from the summit. Despite gaining an appreciation for winter weather and snow, I would not want to go back to living in it for four months out of the year. I think living in California serves me well in that regard. Snow sports can still be a significant part of my life, but instead of living in the snow, I can drive to the mountains, enjoy the snow, then come back to more mild weather where I don't have to shovel or scrape ice and snow off my car windows. It's mid October, and snow will be falling in the mountains soon, so time to start breaking out the snow gear! By the way, why is it raining and fifty-five degrees outside? That's way too cold!
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