You never forget your first time...

Walking home in twenty below zero.

While I had succumbed and bought a tuque to keep my head toasty, I naively wore my dress shoes (and socks) to work. Tonight's sharp wind drove the temperature down to -23. It doesn't feel quite like I'd imagined. Since most of the body is well insulated, there's no shiver. However, the exposed strip of my face felt like it was being peeled, yet peeled by the most dexterous and delicate of craftsmen: sliver by sliver. By some distance, my feet were worst affected. Those dress shoes have no insulation value, and I might as well have been standing barefoot on the frozen ground, skin turned to cold stone. I knew that I'd messed up badly once I got home and stripped off my socks. The feet weren't merely numb, but ice-cold to my fingers. To my alarm, a number of my tiptoes and small spots on my soles had gone white and hard to the touch. I ran a cool shallow bath for my feet, gradually warming the water for the next 25 minutes. Fortunately, there doesn't appear to be any lasting damage, apart from a small whitish lump on my left foot.

Hey, I'm not complaining. It's all part of the experience, and I've learned a critical lesson without too much pain. Insulate thy bloody feet! It's going to get twenty degrees colder...