{"id":12348,"date":"2017-05-11T11:03:56","date_gmt":"2017-05-11T18:03:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rei.com\/blog\/?p=12348"},"modified":"2018-11-11T21:53:57","modified_gmt":"2018-11-12T05:53:57","slug":"lessons-on-fun-from-mom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rei.com\/blog\/climb\/lessons-on-fun-from-mom","title":{"rendered":"Lessons on \u201cFun\u201d from Mom"},"content":{"rendered":"

About a thousand feet from the top of Quandary Peak, a fourteener in Colorado, I pulled my gloved hand off my ski pole and swing my hand around, trying to force warm blood into my numb fingers and thumb. It had been nine degrees Fahrenheit when we started skinning up at the trailhead, and we assumed the sun would rapidly warm the air temperature. But a cold breeze blowing from the northwest chilled everything, and both Hilary and I had numb hands with another hour of climbing up to the summit.<\/p>\n

\"Brendan<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s good advice my mom told me: Swing your arms around to warm your hands up when they\u2019re cold.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s another thing my mom taught me: You don\u2019t have to be having fun to be having fun.<\/p>\n

I grew up in the mountainless state of Iowa, with a mother who made the best of the available terrain. In the summer, we rode bikes everywhere, and she ran three or four times a week.<\/p>\n

In the winter, we went ice skating\u2014outside. We didn\u2019t live anywhere close to an indoor ice rink with immaculately Zambonied planes of ice to skate on. My childhood memory of ice skating is a few dozen days merged into one aggregate scene: I\u2019m ten years old on a cold, cloudy, humid day on Viking Lake in southwest Iowa, pushing my black figure skates around the semi-flat ice, probably layered up like Randy Parker from \u201cA Christmas Story,\u201d wishing I was indoors playing with my G.I. Joe action figures instead of wishing my fingertips didn\u2019t ache so much from the cold.<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s my mom, insisting this is fun, as if we\u2019re splashing around the town swimming pool on a hot summer day. And telling me to swing my hands around to warm up my fingertips.<\/p>\n

\"Brendan<\/p>\n

As an adult, I have the benefit of perspective, and the benefit of another 30 or so years of engineering progress in the design of my insulated Gore-Tex gloves. But I still get cold hands. Hilary and I stood taking a short break at about 13,200 feet on Quandary, wondering how it could be this cold in the middle of April in the sun, each of us trying to figure out if our hands would start to warm up soon or if we should bail.<\/p>\n

I employed an old trick that climbing partners and my mother have used for years\u2013\u201cLet\u2019s just go for a few more minutes and see how we feel.\u201d So, we did, and magically, a few minutes later, the wind let up, we warmed up, and we popped onto the summit of the mountain, looking west at the waves of snowy peaks rolling toward the horizon.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t fun, but it was worth it, and therefore fun, in that messed-up definition outdoorsfolk often have for the things we do. Sometimes, in a conversation with a climber, I\u2019ll ask, \u201cDo you climb ice?\u201d And if they say no, I joke, \u201cOh, because you prefer fun things?\u201d I mean, I think ice climbing is \u201cfun,\u201d but in a very specific, slightly masochistic way.<\/p>\n

Most people would agree that eating hors d’oeuvres in a comfy chair while watching the Super Bowl is pretty fun, or at least a type of fun lots of people could relate to. Ice climbing is a very different kind of fun, that not nearly as many people understand. But I probably \u201cenjoy\u201d it because of all those days ice skating when I was young and my mom insisted it was fun. She\u2019s not a mountain person, but I guess she always got it\u2014that if you get tough enough and stop complaining, your potential to view experiences as enjoyable increases.<\/p>\n

\"Brendan<\/p>\n

My mom hasn\u2019t been ice climbing (yet), but I\u2019m sure she\u2019d be into it. What\u2019s not to like? Cold hands, cold everything, ice chunks hitting you in the legs as you swing ice tools, and when you\u2019re done, the joyful, intense pain of the screaming barfies. If we bring a thermos of hot chocolate, I\u2019m sure she\u2019d feel just like she did back on the ice of Viking Lake in the late 1980s. Maybe next winter.<\/p>\n<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

About a thousand feet from the top of Quandary Peak, a fourteener in Colorado, I pulled my gloved hand off my ski pole and swing my hand around, trying to force warm blood into my numb fingers and thumb. It had been nine degrees Fahrenheit when we started skinning up at the trailhead, and we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":12354,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[352,156,651,728],"internal-tag":[515,1674],"class_list":["post-12348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climb","tag-climb","tag-family","tag-women","tag-women-stories","internal-tag-brendan-leonard","internal-tag-pre-redirect-climb"],"parsely":{"version":"1.1.0","canonical_url":"https:\/\/rei.com\/blog\/climb\/lessons-on-fun-from-mom","smart_links":{"inbound":0,"outbound":0},"traffic_boost_suggestions_count":0,"meta":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","headline":"Lessons on \u201cFun\u201d from Mom","url":"http:\/\/www.rei.com\/blog\/climb\/lessons-on-fun-from-mom","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"http:\/\/www.rei.com\/blog\/climb\/lessons-on-fun-from-mom"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.rei.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/04\/arches-NP.jpg?resize=150%2C150","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https:\/\/www.rei.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/04\/arches-NP.jpg?fit=1500%2C1000"},"articleSection":"Climb","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Angela Crampton"}],"creator":["Angela Crampton"],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Uncommon Path \u2013 An REI Co-op Publication","logo":""},"keywords":["climb","family","women","women stories"],"dateCreated":"2017-05-11T18:03:56Z","datePublished":"2017-05-11T18:03:56Z","dateModified":"2018-11-12T05:53:57Z"},"rendered":"