It is important to get outside and enjoy winter!  No not THAT winter.  Not that cold winter where you wake up in the morning inside of a sealed house pumped full of stale dry furnace air and under a set of warm blankets.  I am talking about a different sort of winter. One where you can go outside and really enjoy the day- where the lows at night are in the 70s and the highs during the day are mid 80s!

Winter in Puerto Rico

Both Cassie and I grew up in Colorado and it was perfectly normal to have the bitter cold months as a regular part of winter life.  Scraping the windows, shoveling snow and experiencing cold temperatures so cold one could feel their nostrils and eyes freeze upon stepping outside.  Months upon months were spent mostly indoors watching movies, football, playing video games and eating with the furnace and humidifiers chugging away.  I think all of those things were invented in the winter for the winter.  Possibly even Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years?  We would have some sunny days and it would warm up to the mid 60s but we knew it was a tease until the real warm up in mid June. Also of note was how brown and dead everything would get in the Colorado winters. The occasional snow actually added a little color!

Weld County, Colorado in the winter: Dry and brown and lots of oil rigs

 
Winter in CO meant that going outside was a lot of work – and layers of clothing!

Now we contrast that with winter life here in Puerto Rico.  Winter temperatures are nearly perfect, humidity is low and we leave the windows and doors open all the time.  The biggest differences are when we look at the winter temps in CO and they dip to their lowest!  Right now it is a balmy negative 27°F!  When it would get that cold, I eventually wouldn’t even go to work.  I learned that it just wasn’t worth it.  What if I broke down?

I used to climb into this ice box at -20 and go to work!

Plus there is the snow and ice that creates dangerous driving conditions and with the ever increasing amount of people on the roads trying to get to work it would just be a mess.  My commute to Longmont would go from 45 minutes to 2 or 3 hours each way.

 Truck broke down in PR in December!  No danger of freezing to death.

The best way to experience the winter in CO was to go on vacation somewhere warm but if that wasn’t possible it was to be at home with food, entertainment and warmth.  This was always ok and cozy at first, but waiting for warm weather again took what seemed like an eternity.  We could only look forward to watching so many things on TV and enjoying so many indoor hobbies before we just wanted to be outside with a living world again.  Plus it was harder to stay healthy.  I think the lack of exercise and sharing the same air with everyone wasn’t the healthiest environment to be in.

Enjoying a relaxing winter day in the tropics

We came to the conclusion that we had a choice. We could try to convince ourselves that living in a freezer was ok or we could live in an endless summer doing the things we enjoyed the most (outside).  We chose the endless summer.  We still enjoy a bowl of chili when it gets “cold” (74°F), we can still watch movies and even football if we wanted to.  We can’t go skiing or build snowmen but beach sand and ocean takes its place!

Cassie at Spanish Wall in Rincón

There are lots of people on the island here that haven’t ever had the cold winter experience.  I doubt that they appreciate the year round nice weather as much as we do! It’s all in the contrast that we can say without a doubt that we now LOVE winter!

Waking up and going to the beach on a wintry morning