Time to Break Out the Handwarmers...

The weekend before this last one, Chris and I went sailing. Yes, we went sailing on a 53-degree drizzly day. Guess whose idea that was? I'll give you a hint: It wasn't mine. But we had to go, because the season is quickly drawing to a close and because the wind was perfect.

Here's a list of the layers I wore:
Sports bra
Thermal shirt
T-shirt
Sweatshirt
Winter coat
Running tights
Windbreaking pants
Wool socks
Hiking boots
Ski gloves
Beanie

And, even wearing all that, I was chilly. I have this thing called Reynaud's Disease... essentially, I have horrible circulation, which is really bad in my extremities (fingers, toes). If you click on the above link and look the scary-looking pictures of fingers, that's what happens to me.  And I'm just cold-intolerant in general. Winter is like a living hell to me. That's one of the reasons why I bought my new boots... gotta keep them toes warm!

Thank goodness I thought to bring a pack of handwarmers with me when we went sailing. Have you all seen these things? You open up a packet, shake the little pouch so that the various ingrediants mix together, which causes a chemical reaction that produces heat. Beautiful, wonderful heat. Over the years, many of the people I know have given me handwarmers as gifts, so I have this huge stockpile of them, which I'm planning on using all winter long.

Anyways, so I stuck the handwarmers in my gloves, which, I'm sure, was the only reason I could actually make myself useful and pull on ropes and stuff (things like gripping the steering wheel of my car or carrying a bag that is even slightly heavy greatly aggravate this condition in my hands).

It was another very windy day, so we reefed the main sail (which basically means that we made the surface area of the sail smaller) and we managed to explore part of the lake that we had never seen before because we were FLYING. It seriously felt like we were going 60 miles per hour for a minute there (Chris said it was probably more like 10, hahaha). To me, the craziest part was when we were going directly with the wind... it feels like you're barely moving (because you're going with the wind, there's not really any wind blowing against your face or anything)... until you look at the scenery flying by you. Amazing, really.

Oh yeah, did I mention we were the only CRAZIES on the entire lake? No? Hmmm, well, we were.

Then, I started to get pretty chilly and made Chris take us back to the marina (much to his dismay). I'm thinking I'm much more of a Tropical-Sailer-Type... Chris, though, comes from hearty Irish stock, and prefers to freeze his ass off.

Oy. Winter is coming....



I.HATE.COLD.