Well Insulated

"Hold on a minute," I said to a friend from home on the phone recently, "I'm going to move into a room with heat." I then walked from my bedroom and into the great room of the house I'm renting with friends here in Wanaka, New Zealand for the Southern Winter, closing the door to the great room behind me. I then giggled a bit, having to explain that yes, there is only one room in our relatively new house that's heated and that it's a rarity that we're able to rent a new house with double-glazed windows, a heat retaining tile roof, insulation, and a "heat pump" in the great room – a heat pump being a wall-mounted electricity-powered forced-air heater.

In my first season here in Wanaka, back in 2007, I shared a house that was not insulated, was built of cinder block, had single pane windows that were less air tight than my backpacking tent, had a fireplace with no flew that was very effective at sucking all the heat out of the house and sending it up the chimney, and that was the coldest building in which I've ever spent time. It would have been a good place to train for life inside a remote mountain artillery battery in wartime. My running joke was that I'd brought thermal long underwear for skiing but only wore it when I went to sleep at night. It was a classic Kiwi "batch" – a bungalow-like summer vacation home typical of Wanaka before the boom in winter sports resorts here began a few decades ago. The best thing I can say about that old house was that it would have been terrific near a beach in a tropical climate.

In defense of the Kiwis, Wanaka was for most of its history a summer resort town, so there was no need to build homes that could comfortably house people in the cold winter of the Southern Alps. In addition, New Zealand is after all a remote island very far south, far from just about everything and with the costs of construction goods that one would expect from its location. And the Kiwis are justly proud of their hard-scrabble, independent-minded, self-sufficiency - it's part of what I enjoy about their company and their nation. Still, it doesn't quite fully explain why it is that despite exorbitantly expensive electricity and a tough climate, Kiwis insist on building inefficient homes that are uncomfortable to inhabit. For crying out loud, I had dinner at a friend's quite modern home last night and pulled some olive oil out of her pantry that was frozen! I mean seriously, her kitchen was so cold that her olive oil froze on the shelf, and that was in a nice house. I wish I were making this up.

So what's an itinerant ski pro to do? How do we keep warm on those cold winter nights with the wind howling as the storms come in off the cold ocean? How can we find a respite from the long days outdoors? Well, truthfully, there are two options. The first is to spend lots of time in the pubs, which generally have roaring fireplaces and all kinds of drinks for sale that can act as vasodilators, warming our hearts and our bodies, steeling our nerves for a night in the igloo. The second is what is referred to here as an 'electric blanket'. An electric blanket here in NZ is not actually a blanket, rather it's a bed pad that goes underneath one's sheets and has an electric coil running through it. Mine has three settings on it – I refer to them as lukewarm, cozy, and pan roast. I typically turn it on the medium setting a few minutes before climbing into bed for the night. Occasionally, I fall asleep fast enough that I don't turn it off until I wake up in the middle of the night severely dehydrated, sweaty, and short only some garlic and rosemary to complete the recipe. Pan seared flannel wrapped roasted Russ. Throw in a goggle tan and an oddly pale mid-section, and I'd scare any creature who happened upon me as I splash cold water on my face at 3:00AM. It's not pretty. But, alas, I do love my electric blanket.

Perhaps next year I'll go into the import / export business and bring into New Zealand a container ship filled with fiberglass insulation, Tyvek, and weather stripping. Then again, maybe I'll just chalk all this up to one of the many curiosities of my time on this side of the globe that I enjoy so much. Now please excuse me while I change into my thermal sleeping attire and do a little snow dance before hitting the sack. There is a storm coming but we need snow pretty badly, and I'm not averse to a little superstitious snow dancing, particularly if it warms up my extremities.