Summer is warm and alive and the sports are so carefree--beach volleyball, swimming, flag football, and surfing in shorts and bikinis. But in my opinion, winter sports are what separate the men from the prima donnas and the women from the Botox crowd. Sports in the winter become more about survival and less about fun. Beach volleyball? Try playing that on a crisp coastline while sand is driven into your corneas by gale-force winds. Swimming? You try jumping into 33 degree water. Flag football? How about losing your footing and face-planting into the frozen tundra that was a warm, forgiving, park lawn in the summer. Surfing in the winter? Forget the shorts and pull out a wetsuit and booties. Winter makes you count the costs. That's why I've always loved winter (also because my birthday is December 10th). Winter offers plenty of opportunities for cheap recreation activities. With winter comes snow, which is right up there with sunshine in my book of awesome natural gifts. Snow leads directly to skiing. And skiing and snowboarding are awesome winter sports. Even better, if you go at night, you can save a lot of dough. Check out Night Chill, More Thrill for all the details. But skiing and boarding aren't the only things that you can do in the winter. Grab a sled, inner tubes, cafeteria trays, some buddies, two or three Thermoses (Thermii?) of hot chocolate and head to the nearest hill. It's free and fun--just read up on safety guidelines before you head out to keep a snow day from turning into a bad day. For all of you who live in warm climates, surfing has the summer connotation in our cultural lexicon, but the waves are often better in the winter. So, put your wetsuit on and get out there--I'll be waiting in the lineup. Remember, if you're not cold, you're not having fun. --Jens The photos are taken from photostream 1 and  photostream 2 and used with permission of Creative Commons licenses: license 1, license 2.