Quote Originally Posted by Melalvai View Post
Good question. I know that my face is "hardened" now, but I don't think my fingers are. Fifteen years ago when I was in college, only a couple hundred miles south of here and during years when winters were milder, I biked 5 minutes each way to campus with inadequate gloves all winter and got a touch of frostbite. For years afterwards, my hands would swell up if the water in the bathroom sink was cold! I'm very paranoid now about my hands getting cold.
This is all very interesting. Growing up I was the kid that wore shorts year-round (in NC so winters are relatively mild with some snow). I then went to college in the mountains and some of my favorite memories are when friends and I would go out snowboard in blizzards. We spent a lot of time outside in really really cold weather. Once or twice so cold that water would freeze before it hit the ground. Then I moved to Northern VA and spent a little over a year as a working student for a horse trainer. I was outside from 6:30am to sometimes 8 or 9 at night, 6 days a week. The girl I worked with and I shared a house on the property but we made so little money that we kept most of the house at 40-50 degrees so the pipes wouldn't burst and our individual rooms at around 60 degrees. In the winter I was sleeping in a sleeping bag with my normal bed covers and in sweatpants and a sweatshirt. Ever since that year I've been super sensitive to cold weather. It has been nearly 4 years now and I am finally not shivering when it is lower than 70 degrees! It has been very strange and I am always dressed in more layers than anyone around me including gloves in my work office with the thermostat set at 70 degrees. I've decided I'm just weird. (But my tolerance for cold seems to be returning slowly.)