California Cold

Watching the Chiefs play the Dolphins in -30 degree weather from the comfort of my couch was cold. I can’t imagine how it felt to play. I’m surprised we didn’t see a finger snap off clean or a tongue get stuck to a field goal post. Fortified by a bottle of wine, I still found my hands shaking and my nuts shriveling up like raisins every time they flashed the “feels like -30” on the television.

It reminded me of the coldest night I’ve ever experienced. I was living in Huntington Beach, California and decided to drive home to New Jersey for Christmas with my buddy Kevin Pecca. We mapped the whole thing out, picking places to see on our once in a life time cross country drive home. The first stop was the Grand Canyon.

The Grand Canyon is in the desert. When I think of desert, I think of heat. Crazy, right? I’m sure when you just read the word desert you had a picture in your mind of long rolling sand dunes with heat waves hovering like Linus’s stink lines. So when my buddy and I left the perfect 75 degree temperatures of Huntington Beach in the direction of a desert, we didn’t bother changing out of our board shorts. We threw on the incredible Honkey Chateau album by Elton John and hit the road. Little did I know I’d be humming song number three from that album over and over come night fall (go ahead, look it up).

Fast forward eight hours and you can imagine the horror as we watched the temperature on the front dash drop like Joe Biden boarding Air Force One. 75, 65, 55, 40, 30, 20…

When we finally reached our destination around 9 PM it was pitch black and 3 degrees. That’s right. Three. Not thirty three, not thirteen, three whole degrees.

Did I mention our plan was to camp? Fuck me.

I knew we were in trouble when I saw an Elk the size of a mini-van run across the road in front of our car. Animals that big thrive in frigid temperatures. But it wasn’t the elk that really caught our attention. Nor was it the rapidly decreasing temperature. It was the stars and the moon. I’d never seen anything so clear before and the cold simply enhanced the moment. It was like looking through glasses after they’ve been cleaned with one of those alcohol wipes. The sky was in HD.

But the beauty of a winter night sky can’t help you when you’re ill equipped for subzero camping. We had a total of seven fire logs and a couple of winter jackets. But we’re men. Men thrive off no planning. When conditions are rough, men can do ingenious things. Without real tough men our society would crumble. We pitched a tent, lit a fire, passed a bottle of whiskey, and passed out on ground colder than an ice hockey rink.

Like true gritty men, we woke up in each other’s arms. That’s right. Hugging, noses touching, breath passing heat back and forth to one another. Erotic if you’re into that Brokeback Mountain stuff. But we’re not. I swear we’re not. Once we realized we were spooning all night for warmth I went quickly to my car, turned the heat up, and slept with my head on the steering wheel. It wasn’t gay, I told myself, just survival.

After thawing out and thanking the deity that watches over ignorant East Coasters, we drove to the Canyon itself.

I can’t quite explain seeing the Grand Canyon. I almost fell over due to vertigo when I first laid eyes on the beast. It’s so big it is almost incomprehensible. Put it this way, there was a plane flying in the canyon and it looked like an ant. Surviving a night in inhuman temperatures followed by seeing a wonder of this world left me with a mix between awe and gratitude. When we reached Denver, our next stop, a beer never tasted so good. A beer has also never gotten me that drunk (it’s the altitude).

Throughout the remainder of our trip, we reminisced about living in California. Pecca was going back after the holidays, I was staying in New Jersey, and it felt like the end of an era. California is a magical place. As a surfer, you don’t even have to check if the waves are going to be good. You just get up and go. You don’t have to check the weather either. It’s 75 and sunny. The beaches are free. I repeat, the beaches are free. And we met a ton of good people out there (shoutout Willy the kid and the entire Gleason family). If you’re on the East Coast right now, where the low is hovering in the mid-teens and there might be what they call a “wintery-mix” (which sounds like Santa naming his bowel movements) I’m sure California sounds like some place you need to move to. But one topic kept rearing its ugly head on that drive home…

That the majority of Californians are shot. This is not an observation but a provable fact. Before I knew anything about these people my first reaction was that they all had been lobotomized. When you look in a well-done Californian’s eyes the irises resemble an undercooked fried egg yolk. Maybe plastic surgery affected brain function? I didn’t know. 

There are some obvious reasons for the shot-ness. For one, you can’t be that close to Hollywood and not be a little weird. They don’t call it Lala Land for nothing. For two, the homeless population is bananas. If you were homeless would you rather gut it out on the mean streets of New York or walk around aimlessly on a beach? I rest my case. Bums are a lot of things, but they aren’t stupid (lol).

But it wasn’t until we got home and explained this predicament to a legend of perception – the one and only Tom Coyne – that we found a real answer to the question.

“Oh yea – I get it. They’ve never been freezing before.”

It was a one second chirp at a bar but this man blew my mind. He hit the nail on the fucking head. These Californian’s had never frozen their asses off before. They grew up in a place with perfect weather, surrounded by perfect beaches. The entire southern half of the state melts down if there is a little rain on the roads. God forbid the temperature gets down in the mid 40’s. I’ll never forget the day I arrived. It was a balmy 60 degrees and everyone at the bar was in hoodies, jackets, and snow hats. I donned a t-shirt and shorts.

No wonder half my neighbors were all smiles and no substance. They waved at me like they knew me but never asked my name. The first time it happened I thought someone was trying to kidnap me. I was 25. Such odd behavior could only come from a population that knows no cold.

So this winter, when you want to bitch, moan, and complain about how cold it is in the North East, when you find yourself pleading and begging for summer to come, when you think you can’t take one more frozen windshield or randomly begin crying because you haven’t seen the sun all day (I’ve never done this), just remember you’re building character. You are fortifying yourself from the shot-ness. You are putting in long and hard hours to be normal, and it will pay off.

One night this winter I want you to go outside and look up. Take it all in. The moon is brighter. The stars shine like little heat lamps in the distance. It’s all one big reminder that it’s cold out there in the deep dark universe and we are lucky to be here. Alive. And then I want you to remember that it could be worse. You could move out to California and have your brain fried if you’re not careful. You could be getting tackled by behemoths while it’s 30 below freezing. Or you could go camping in 3-degree weather and wake up in the arms of your lover best friend.