Wind Chill Is For Wimps

The air temp when the puck dropped for our first game this morning at the US National Pond Hockey Championships? A chilly minus fourteen. That ain't windchill, that's straight up temperature.

It was cold enough to freeze up the generator in the main warming house tent, which meant no heat until later in the morning. I was able to find space in another building to get dressed, but not everyone was so lucky.

As players straggled out onto the frigid ice, in some ways we resembled the German troops who arrived at the gates of Moscow in 1941 completely unprepared for the Russian winter. Under our helmets, there was a variety of mismatched clothing employed to stave off the cold. Hats, hoods, headbands, masks, skull caps, scarves, kerchiefs, etc, I swear one guy was wearing a part of his kitchen curtains.

Many faces bore the oily sheen of petroleum jelly. Some used hand and feet warming packets. It was a battle to stay warm, but one well worth fighting.

And you know what? It wasn't that bad. Part of it is probably the expectation of extreme cold that you build up. When you experience the real thing it can't possibly live up to the hype (yes, I have been watching the local news). The other thing is that once you start playing, get your legs moving, and are in the heat of the action, you don't think about the cold. It's really a non-factor.

By the time each of our games ended today, I was drenched with sweat and not in the least way cold. The coldest parts of the day for me were walking from the car in the morning and back in the afternoon. In between, out on the lake I was completely comfortable.

The best part of the pond hockey championships is playing hockey (of course), making new acquaintances, and renewing old ones. The fact that there's a beer garden in the warming tent doesn't hurt either, The fact that said beer is Summit Extra Pale Ale and nothing but Summit EPA is icing on a very frozen, but delicious cake.