It’s so bloody cold that after I’ve made a cup of tea I’m going back to bed to read The Anthologist.
It’s so cold that …
- You can’t go skiing. Not that I would.
- You can’t use the seat warming in the car; the battery’s only working at 40% of its capacity. Too cold to warm the seats, oh the irony!
Tomorrow: Absolute Zero.
A Bad Guide 
so it’s true that when it’s too cold the skis don’t slide? b/c that’s what the explanation i’ve heard/read about why the skis are not popular or traditional in our regions, despite having plenty of snow in the mountains
the last time i’ve checked it was -39 F at nights in UB, but daytimes looked not that cold only around -10
that was the explanation, i thought and wrote something different, it’s like my fingers work separately
You would think that when it gets below a certain temp. the skis wouldn’t press on the snow and melt it into water–what keeps the skis moving–but my wife & daughter say it’s not true; perhaps because you wax the bottoms of your skis with special preparations, according to the temperature, to make them slide optimally. I hate ski waxing though, it’s really hard to get off afterwards so I never do it (but I’m not a very good skier).
No, I just meant it’s too damn cold, but now my wife says she saw 2 people skiing just now. Nuts. You wouldn’t catch me out there on the slopes if it’s under -5 C.; but then I’m not Norwegian and I wouldn’t walk to the South Pole, either.
Well, we had to do it (in “PE”) in Alaska; but it was “cross-country”. Which spoiled me for “downhill”. Up, down, up, down. Why bother. If it GETS YOU SOMEPLACE it is worth doing. And the specific wax (bear grease? – goose?) makes all the difference. But in those days it was really lo-tech. We had wooden skis.
I wish all temperatures were prefaced by letters (F, C….?) Because 40 below in my junior-high-school days was a l o n g way below the freezing point of water; which was +32º. I can convert € & £ & $. I must get an intuitive handle on ºC BELOW ZERO. The above are easy.
Thank-you for the prod.
I just reread that and I am not sure I am really that old.
I only do cross country too. I put “on the slopes” for colour.
I can just press a button to get the F. temp. Here are some easy to remember ones:
-10 C = +14 F
-20 C = -4 F
-30 C = -22F
-40C = -40 F
Catanea: If you’re not sure then you are.
AJP: Ski waxing for far below zero is no problem. It’s hard, dry wax to make the skis slide. The klister used for grip on old and wet or re-frozen snow, that’s what’s been cooked by the devil in the deepest cave in hell. The better your technique, the less the need for aid to get a grip. As a beginner and a foreigner you will be told to use much more festesmøring than anyone would use themselves.
-10F = around -25C daytime, still pretty cold home then
I’m not a beginner, I’m an ender.
That’s very cold, read.
wow, surprising
i did not know
I’ve more or less taken to hibernating, myself. Remarkable what an extra blanket can do for comfort.
I’m not a beginner, I’m an ender.
Because years after that first trip you can still feel sticky stains of klister for skaraføre on the inside of your mittens, and every now and then you find another lump of vintage Rød Spesial in your hair.
Local Altays hack them out of a single piece of lightweight wood – spruce or white pine – and wrap them with hairy, brittle horse-shank skin.
My Norwegian father-in-law & his friends made skis like this, when they were children, 70-something years ago.
I think the oldest skis found are from somewhere around the Lake Bajkal, and also that I’ve seen a reconstructed Proto-Uralic word for ‘ski’, so it’s likely to be an ancient part of the semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer cultures all over the taiga that the Germanic settlers, whenever they came, learned from the earlier inhabitants. A thin slice of mytological evidence: The Norse ski godess Skaði was the daughter of a jötunn named Þjazi who may be an old Saami ocean god.
One old skiing technique made use of different skis, one long for gliding and one short with fur for grip. Only the long ski was a ski, the short one was an andor. When and where my father grew up they called skis for ånnera but they didn’t use fur.