www.MoreKidsThanSuitcases.com THE WINTER BY STEVE PRATT P
eople seem to love the winters up here in the Okanagan. I’ll admit that the winter season has kind of grown on me with all the skiing, sledding, skating, and other great activities we have here in Kelowna, but my admiration of the cold weather has its limits. After a couple months of layering clothes so thick that bending enough to merely see your toes is impossible, I’ve had enough of temperatures with a negative sign in front of them. Unless your name is Frosty, you need to thaw out once in a while to truly enjoy the Okanagan winter, and the best way to do that is with a warm weather vacation.
We’ve tried a few different destinations to try and keep our blood circulating during the winter months. Phoenix, Southern California, Las Vegas….each of these trips sent us home feeling capable of dealing with another month or two of shoveling the driveway. There is one place however, that not only revives you from your winter blues, but sends you home so relaxed that you actually start looking forward to the next winter, just so you can come back and do it all again.
It takes about six hours to fly there, but within the first six minutes of your arrival at Honolulu International Airport, you’ll start to feel the effects. That’s about how long it takes to make your way from the arrival gate, through the open air corridors, to baggage claim, and by the time you’re plucking your bags from the carousel, every trace of that cold Canadian winter will be starting to fade from your memory. You
won’t need your jacket. You won’t need your sweater. Heck, you’ll barely need your pants as your thoughts turn from scraping your windshield to scraping up enough money for your first drink by the pool.
It takes a couple days of sitting by that pool, but eventually your body temperature will begin to rise. The important thing to thaw out though isn’t your body, but your mind. The brain gets hardened when dealing with Canadian winters. Faced with forecasts of ice and frost, you convince yourself that shuffling through the snow on the shore of Lake Okanagan is the same thing as a stroll on the beach of Oahu. You tell yourself that a quick visit to the local florist is a good substitute for wandering around a tropical garden, and ice cream….Well let’s agree that there’s never a bad time
for ice cream, but
somehow it just tastes a little better in places where it doesn’t
get harder when you leave it on the counter.
How long do you need to shake those winter blahs? It’s different for everybody. Some people need a week, some people need a month, and some people just avoid winter altogether and spend the entire season in warmer climates. For me, a weekend is all it takes. Just a couple of days without having to pull my toque over my earmuffs and I’m recharged and ready to head back. After all, there are still all of the Okanagan’s great winter activities to be enjoyed. With my mind cleared and my body unfrozen, maybe I can even make it off the bunny hill at Big White this year.
WINTER 2013 | 21
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