[Paddlewise] Cold Water

So it appears that there is no one who actually has any *data* on how
much 
longer a drysuit would let you tolerate cold water vs. a wetsuit.  I was
very 
surprised by this.   

jim holman



Me:

I hate to be a nasty gadfly here but -

Actually, I enjoy it -

It saddens me to realize that so many people see the human body as some
sort of measurable object rather than the complex, amazing organism
[defined as "a complex structure of interdependent and subordinate
elements whose relations and properties are largely determined by their
function in the whole"] that the body is.

It cannot be that any two people are exactly alike or even close to being
alike in enough ways that we could accurately measure their responses to
anything [temperature, gun shot wounds, spicy food, watching someone slip
on a banana peel] and quantify those responses.  My zero degree sleeping
bag leaves me cold at 10 degrees but my wife sweats in it at zero.  No,
we don't weigh the same and probably don't have the same body fat.  And I
usually eat more for dinner when we're camping.  But I toss and turn more
than she does.  You probably get the picture...

Human and animal bodies are mysterious things that biologists can't begin
to comprehend in all facets of operation.  I know that turtles can sleep
at the bottom of the frozen river all winter, I know that tiny birds and
butterflies can navigate huge distances, I know that some people can eat
liver.  All those complex systems contained in the body work in subtle
ways to accomplish the goal of living right up to the day they don't do
that - which is the day we die.

I believe that things are never equal.

Which is why we have brains to make decisions for ourselves and language
to communicate our reasons for our decisions to other people.

Marvelous things that our bodies are, we can under or over dress a little
and still be ok.

I guess I'm trying to say that the demand for a measurable body is a
demand to take the essence out of what we and all beings are: weird,
mostly unknowable, quite unmeasurable, and all interesting. 

I'm not a good enough writer to say this the way I mean it to be taken so
I'll stop here.

Jim Tibensky
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