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But you are not wearing a hat!

mapleleafI am on a campaign to get people outdoors in the winter and one of the things y’all need to do to enjoy your time outside is to DRESS FOR IT!!! Layers and hats, please! Tonight I walked downtown and back in 8-10 degree (F) weather. What did I wear? Lemme see…

My black sequined mad bomber hat

Wool scarf

Wool / silk turtleneck sweater

Polartech vest

Columbia ski jacket (outer shell only — I almost *never* need the zip-in liner)

Tights

Cotton / spandex leggings

Long wool skirt

Smart wool socks

My *old* LL Bean winter tennies (you do not want to know about the new ones…)

YakTrax

Little knit glubs — the 50-cent kind you can buy at the grocery store. (I had an extra pair in my backpack.)

My Maple Leaf Backpack! Yes. This one, the backpack that prompted a fellow denizen of The Planet Ann Arbor to welcome me to my own city a couple days ago. That was so much fun. This backpack was part of the swag my parents got when they went on a trip to Toronto with the Lake State Elders (or some such group) back in the 1990s. They got two of them and eventually The Commander flung them on me. I really wasn’t using a backpack for anything at the time and I think I might have pitched one of them.

Years later, the Plum Market opened up “down on the corner” and I started backpacking most of my grokkeries. That led to using a backpack for trips to the farmer’s market and hiking junkets in general. You never know when you might want to schlep something home or shed a layer or need a bumbershoot or whatever. I had a different backpack for a while but the zippers got all skewgeed up and one day I dredged up this loverly maple leaf pack and I have never looked back. And people are always telling me what a nice backpack it is. Which always cracks me up because it’s just a cheap backpack my parents picked up free on a trip yada yada. Then again, the zippers work (knock on wood).

This entry was posted on Friday, January 3rd, 2014 at 10:00 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

2 Responses to “But you are not wearing a hat!”

  1. Margaret Says:
    January 3rd, 2014 at 10:17 pm

    You are so cool!! When it was those temps here(unheard of for us) I layered and wore my big yellow “bumblebee” coat, a hat and a scarf around my face. I am no fan of the extreme cold, but it IS manageable.

  2. Jay Says:
    January 3rd, 2014 at 10:25 pm

    I think one key to being out in the colder temps is that you actually get used to it being cold. There was one year at MSU when it was below zero for a couple of weeks straight. (Memory may be exaggerating a bit). I could never get into the cold in Colorado because it would be 70 degrees one day and freezing the next. That said, I do miss true winters from time to time.