Saturday, October 19, 2019

Winter Is Complicated

One morning this past February I was making coffee in our kitchen at work when one of my co-workers came strolling in.  On this particular day her typically bubbly personality was overridden by a glum and jaded demeanor.  "What's wrong?" I asked.  "I hate this weather" she said as she rolled her eyes.  It was after all, a chilly and wet morning in Mountain View.  It had been an unusually wet winter and this was our third consecutive day with steady rain and the temperature barely cracking fifty-five degrees.  I was empathetic for a moment, but then I remembered all the winters I endured living in Michigan and Chicago.  "Oh, come on.  This rain is making it more green outside, and rain means lots of snow in the mountains" I replied, trying to sound optimistic.  Although she somewhat agreed with my sentiment, she promptly proclaimed her love for the warm, sunny weather that Silicon Valley receives during the summer months.  "It's better than where I'm from" I continued.  "You think this is bad, try living with snow, cloudy skies, and temperatures that barely crack the freezing mark for four months out of the year".  "Oh, God" she replied laughingly.  "There's no way I could do it".  I've gotten this same response from several other native Californians, and I myself occasionally wonder how I was able to suffer through those Midwest winters for so many years.

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!

Sunday, October 6, 2019

Water Boy

"I'm sure you're fit enough to finish the race, but paddling twenty-two miles across Lake Tahoe with a seven hour cutoff might not be the best idea for your first paddle race".  This was the latest message in the email chain that I had been exchanging with the Race Director of a stand up paddle board race across Lake Tahoe that I was considering doing.  I've been doing water sports off and on since I was a kid, but I had never participated in a paddle race before, and it was clear that I was a little in over my head.  I agreed to sit this one out, do some shorter races first, and sign up next year.  I breathed a sigh of relief, feeling that I likely dodged a bullet.  On the morning of the race I hopped into my car before the sun came up, stopped at 7-Eleven for coffee and provisions, put on some good music, and hit the road, arriving in Tahoe City around 9:00 AM.  I was going to stick to my original plan, only with one minor change.  Instead of racing, I would spend a few hours paddling around the lake on my own so I could enjoy the experience without the pressure.  Once I parked, I walked down to the beach, rented a board and paddle, and off I went.  Lake Tahoe is one of my favorite places.  It rests majestically at 6,200 feet in the Sierra Nevada mountains, offers stunning scenery, and is a year round paradise for outdoor enthusiasts.  The water was clear, blue, fresh, and calm as I paddled along.  Tall mountains surrounded the lake as the sun lit up the tops of the pine trees along the shoreline.  As I admired the scenery, I spotted a couple of sailboats out in the distance.  I fixated on them for a few seconds before shifting my focus back to the open lake in front of me.  My mind began to wander.         

I remember the first time I went sailing.  Actually, no I don't.  Which is probably a good thing, otherwise this story would be super cliche, but sailing played a significant role in my life while growing up.  My dad and his buddies participated in sailboat races before I was born and I grew up spending summer weekends sailing with my family and our family friends as a way of enjoying the outdoors.  laying out on the deck near the bow of our twenty-six foot Ranger sailboat and looking out at the water was always a nice distraction from whatever I had going on at school or my part time job.  I remember always looking out at the buildings along the distant shoreline and reveling in the peacefulness of the lake.  It was mellow compared to the hustle and bustle of the cities along the shore.  Every July my dad, along with a few other guys, would assist his friend Gale, who I respectfully called "Uncle Gale", in sailing his boat from Lake St. Clair to a small town called Presque Isle on the northern coast of Michigan, a trip that took approximately forty-eight hours.  My dad's other friend Mike joined every year as well, while the rest of the line up rotated year over year.  Once the guys arrived up north with the boat, Uncle Gale's wife, Aunt Gina, would drive up north, get on the boat, then my dad and the other guys would use her car to drive back to my hometown in the Detroit area, while Uncle Gale and Aunt Gina spent anywhere from three to five weeks on the boat together, sailing from town to town.  In the summer of 1999, when I was thirteen years old, my dad asked me if I wanted to accompany him and the guys for the trip north.  He explained that if I was going to join I would have to follow a few rules.  One of the rules was don't get too drunk, which wasn't a problem for me because I was barely a teenager.  The other one was that since we were sailing through the night, each of the guys had to take two hour "shifts" while the others slept.  This basically meant that one guy had to sit in the cockpit to make sure we didn't hit any freighters or collide with any boats.  The auto-steer function kept us on course so we didn't need to worry about steering the boat.  My dad said that we could both do his shifts together.  I happily agreed to join, and did so subsequently every year all the way up until my mid-twenties when I moved to California.  After the first couple of years, I began participating in the return trip from up north back down to Lake St. Clair as well.  Ever year was a different experience.  Most years, the weather was great, and the water was smooth as glass, other times it was stormy and the lake was so choppy the boat was bouncing almost the entire time.  But it was always fun.  The first year in particular when I was thirteen years old was game-changing for me.  The trip had everything you'd expect from four guys on a sailboat together.  There was plenty of foul language, dirty jokes, and laughs.  On the way up north we would always stop in a town called Port Huron.  We'd always leave Lake St. Clair on a Friday afternoon and make it up to Port Huron by around 10:00 PM, pull into the harbor, and stay for the night.  Why Port Huron?  Because every year, the Friday that we left was Boat Night.  Boat Night was the night before a yearly sailboat race that started in Port Huron and it was a giant party chock full of alcohol, drugs, and other debauchery which flooded the streets of downtown and brought a large amount of business to Port Huron's bars.  Every year, we'd arrive, get off the boat, and go for a walk to admire the chaos while all the drunks stumbled around and puked in the alleys.  Believe me, it was quite entertaining.  Especially when my dad scolded me for mouthing off to some drunk douche bag who made fun of my Limp Bizkit T-shirt.  Boat Night was fun, but what I really looked forward to about those trips were the adventures on the lake.  Sitting in the cockpit in the middle of the night with my dad under the stars was one of the coolest things I remember.  I had always thought being on the water was peaceful, but being out there at night was a whole other experience.  We were always about a half a mile from the shoreline and I loved watching the lights from the lighthouses flashing on the distant shore.  The absence of light pollution on the lake presented skies full of beautiful stars.  There were millions of them and they were more steadfast and bright than I had ever seen.  Typically, there wasn't much going on out on the lake in the middle of the night except for the occasional freighter or sailboat that would cruise by, although my dad and I did see some crazy stuff on occasion.  One year we saw the northern lights, which is incredibly rare in Northern Michigan.  Another year, we saw what we actually thought was a UFO.  It was so strange.  We were sitting in the cockpit, when out of nowhere, a mysterious black object appeared overhead, probably about a quarter of a mile ahead of us.  The object shined a light on the lake for about five seconds, then completely vanished.  No sounds or anything.  My dad and I looked at each other in disbelief.  Of course, Uncle Gale and the rest of the guys didn't believe a word we said the next morning when we told them about this surreal encounter.  There's nothing like watching a sunrise in the middle of the lake either.  One year when I was nineteen, I was in the cockpit as the sun was rising.  The thin clouds took on various shades of orange and yellow as the sun fired light across the morning sky.  The Blue Water bridge appeared in the distance, meaning we were about to enter the St. Clair river.  As I was enjoying this euphoric moment, Uncle Gale poked his head out from down below and handed me a cup of coffee.  "Here's your coffee, Duker".  He never called me Liam, I was always Duker my whole life, and still am to this day.  "Thanks" I replied taking the steaming mug.  "Oh wait, do we have any creamer on board?" I asked.  "Nope".  I drank my coffee straight up and from that day forward, never used creamer again.

Refocusing my thoughts on the present, the lake was becoming more choppy, as more motorboats, some pulling wake boarders, were now speeding across the lake.  As the waves rolled towards me from the middle of the lake, I began to roll up and down, which added more excitement to the paddling experience.  I thought about how much my dad, Uncle Gale, and the guys would love sailing on Lake Tahoe.  I thought about sailing on Lake St. Clair and the sailing trips to and from up north and how much I wanted to do it again.  I thought about kayaking on Grand Lake during the summer every year in Northern Michigan at the Fireside Inn (that place will get it's own blog post eventually).  Lastly, I thought about how all the experiences have led to my love of being on the water as an adult.  Sadly, I don't sail as much nowadays since I've moved to California, but one of these years, I'll visit Michigan in the summer so I can reconnect with sailing and Lake St. Clair.  In the meantime, enjoying the lakes of California on a kayak or paddle board is an excellent way to keep my love of being on the water going strong!