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Sunday was Groundhog Day. Around my house, we pass on that, and instead honor Frostbite Day on Feb. 4.
The tradition started guiltily enough just last year. On Feb. 3, Allen Best, an old companion at newspapering and adventuring, arrived when conditions looked favorable for something we had been putting off for seven years -- cross-country skiing over Old Monarch Pass.
As we sat around the kitchen table that Sunday night
making plans and swapping lies, my daughter Columbine, who
was 9 then, spoke up. Daddy, why is it that you get to
go have fun with a friend tomorrow, and I have to go to
school?
Not having a good answer, I told her to play hooky with us if she wanted to. The next morning, after spotting vehicles at both ends of the pass, we laid on yellow wax for the one-mile climb to the top -- the trail was well-used and slick.
Its gentle west side promised six miles of easy gliding, which held until we got down into the trees. The day before, a low storm had blown in from the west and stalled against the Continental Divide. It left 18 inches of powder.
We pressed on westward; Allen and I took turns at the exhausting work of breaking trail. By sunset, we were still miles above the valley floor. The only bright spot was a full moon beaming through the kind of cold that appears only in the Gunnison Country and Robert Service poems.
Allen and I didn't get alarmed, because we didn't want to panic Columbine. Besides that, my wife, Martha, has become quite experienced at getting alarmed whenever I'm more than four or five hours late. At 8 p.m. by Allen's moonlit watch, we figured she'd have everybody but the Coast Guard looking for us.
She tried. However, the local sheriff's dispatcher told her that they didn't search at night -- wait till morning. If a morning search had been necessary, they wouldn't have needed to hurry, not on our account, anyway. Martha did rouse a neighbor to come looking for us.
Knowing Allen and me, Rob Wikoff checked every saloon between Salida and Sargents before turning up the side road to the Means Ranch and the foot of Old Monarch Pass. Rob was there at midnight with a warm pickup -- it was 35 below and icicles hung from our beards -- and I have never been so glad to see someone.
Feb. 4 is Frostbite Day because Allen saw five toes turn hideous purple, then black; he almost lost them. I emerged unscathed, but Columbine had frostbite on two toes and returned to school that Friday on crutches. (A hint to parents of chronic truants: She hasn't wanted to ditch school even once since then.)
I pass on this story, much of it true, not to boast of skill or courage. We did some things right and many things wrong, and we're still arguing over whether we learned anything from it. I mention our frostbite tour because the state legislature is again being urged to require motorcyclists to wear helmets.
Riding a motorcycle without a helmet is risky -- and fun. Just like our cross-country ski trip into the backcountry.
The unhelmeted motorcyclist might be killed. Tim McClure of Breckenridge, a friend of mine, died last November when he skied into an avalanche chute.
Riding bareheaded might well cause an increase in taxes, what with ambulance and police costs. While we were missing, Martha did everything she could to raise local taxes with extra search-and-rescue costs.
Helmetless motorcycling may indeed cause more serious injuries, thus raising health-insurance rates. And if either Allen or I had been employed enough to have health insurance, he and Columbine would have tapped it for every treatment known to medicine.
So why is it that backwoods skiing is promoted on tourist brochures, and they want to outlaw riding a motorcycle without a helmet?
If the do-gooders were indeed concerned about public safety, they would be trying to outlaw all risky activities that are pursued for private pleasure: not just cross-country skiing, but downhill skiing where lifts collapse and legs break and people die when they hit trees, as well as four-wheeling, technical climbing and whitewater rafting.
The do-gooders aren't about to lobby against those dangerous pastimes, though, because tourists come to Colorado to ski, jeep, climb and raft -- and spend lots of money in the process.
The real reason that people promote a helmet law isn't safety. They pick on bikers because the other thrill-seekers spend money. Going through the gears on a twisting road, wind in your face and hair flying behind you, is a cheap thrill. If you had to pay $20 to $200 a day for it, the way you do for most other forms of Colorado fun, nobody would even think of forcing you to wear a helmet.
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