Having lived in the shadow of the Mayo Clinic my whole life, I can say that I have seen some ugly things that people have had to endure to stay alive. One of the most obvisous is seeing where parts and pieces of heads and faces and hands are missing. Most of this is from skin cancer.
As anglers we know that summer sun can cook us if we are not careful. Somehow the idea that winter’s chill doesn’t carry any threat slips into the thinking cap and the sun and its nasty reputation for disfigurement get put on hold until next spring when the short sleeves return. Bad thinking.
Snow and ice reflect a tremendous amount of energy that the suns bears down on us. Direct exposure would seem bad enough, then add in the reflected value of the sun’s energy and its easy to see how this all gets compounded.
Take some time and throw on some sunscreen at home before you head to the ice. Take a chapstick with sunscreen additive along and use it. A small bottle of hand lotion , with or without sunscreen, kept in a shirt pocket can help eliminate dry skin that happens while on the ice and can go a long way to help ward off wind burn.
This is a topic that seldom gets mentioned, but the guy I saw this morning while getting a coffee at Mac and Dons reminded me….bloody bandage where the top 1/2 of his ear was. He’s a Nebraska farmer, about my age and he said he never wore a cap or thought about sunscreen. He shook his head when he went on to say that they don’t know if this will kill him or not. It certainly is a cause for thought.
How you treat your skin at 30 years old can definitely determine the direction your life may take when you are 60. Think about it.
