It's been a cold winter in Ottawa with some jaw juddering lows of -40 and some good snow storms that went on to batter Eastern Canada and Newfoundland causing massive electrical outages and general disruption. For all my complaining and whinging about the weather I take note that it could always be worse. In fact, as a family we have made some serious inroads into embracing Ottawa winters. Skiing. It's hard and well, lets face it simply dishonest to attempt to glamorize our local ski hill but with its 400 vertical feet of icy glides and the one circa 1800 chair lift that creaks and groans its way to the summit - however, we have still managed to find some kind of winter solice amongst the chattering teeth and watered down hot chocolate. It's simply astonishing how one can adjust to sitting and slowly freezing to death in the 15 minutes it takes to reach the top with the promise of a 31 second 'schuss' back down to join the line up of die hard locals, all with back-slapping-shiiit-we're-tough-grins frozen, quite literally to their wind rasped faces. There is of course a sense of solid satisfaction and a quite reaffirmation of one's manhood for sticking it out in -45 conditions (with wind chill) with a wife who is 'cold intolerant' and a 5 year old boy that has a habit of throwing his gloves off the chair lift with absolutely no sense of fear. "Can I jump off the Chair Wift Dad?" Noah's L's are being elusive. "No," I reply making a mental note of the cast away mitt and handing him mine with a wince. Skiing.