For the first time, I spent the off-season in Calgary.
It started off OK — the winter wasn’t that bad — but I think February almost killed me. Living in Tennessee the past couple of years and then having to experience weather this drastic . . . I’ve had many people tell me this is probably one of the worst winters Calgary has had and I just could not take it. It was so cold.
I kept telling everyone, “I’m not used to this,” and they would say back to me, “We’re not used to this, either, and we were born here!” So hopefully next winter, it lightens up just a tad.
I’m so glad we have a freezer so that way we can go grocery shopping for a month’s worth of food so we wouldn’t have to leave the house.
That’s what I was dreading the most by spending the winter here — the continuous minus-30 weather. I’ve never felt anything like that. But having said that, it was all right.
The snow makes the city look so beautiful. When it’s covered in all white, it’s so beautiful. When there’s fresh snow that comes down and then the sun comes out, it’s fantastic. We’re up in the northwest so we get an opportunity to see the mountains when we drive to our home. The winter scenery is so beautiful here. You can see that God has created something awesome.
The one thing is that my kids never had a snow suit before. So the first day it snowed really hard, they didn’t have boots or snow suits so we had to take them out of school that day just to go shopping for snow boots and suits and thermals and gloves. We never had to do that in Tennessee.
But the family enjoyed the winter. We went tobogganing a few times and they just loved it. They don’t like going up the hill, but going down? It’s a blast for them. I even had to get myself some snow pants because the jeans weren’t working when the snow was flying coming down that hill.
We even stayed here for Christmas. We were supposed to visit my brother in Washington but we were supposed to go through Banff on our way there and the roads were a little bit icy. This being my first time driving in that kind of weather, we decided not to go.
So we spent our first Christmas in Calgary, which was pretty good because this was the first time we had snow on Christmas. We enjoyed it. Hey, you’re supposed to have snow on Christmas.
I can tell you one thing about the coming season is that I probably will not wear long sleeves again. Before, coming from Tennessee, I would think the weather during the later part of the season was cold. But now I’m like a true Canadian. Whereas before I would put a jacket on when the weather got just a little bit chilly, now I’m going to be wearing a short-sleeved shirt.
One of the reasons we wanted to stay here for the winter is that I want to be a part of this community. I’m organizing a football camp during our bye week this year and this gives me an opportunity to show kids what I’ve learned.
The season is not too far away now and I’m going to continue training. That’s one of the advantages of having stayed up here is that I’ve been able to prepare so much better for the upcoming season.
In the meantime, you can follow me on Twitter at @Mr_Raymond25
Keon Raymond, #25
>> Raymond bio