The best way to stay warm while playing golf in cold weather, in my humble IMHO, is to walk. But some courses don’t allow walking, and some golfers can’t carry a beer cooler for eighteen holes. Golfers who do use carts know that riding makes winter seem even colder than the thermometer says it is—an effect known to meteorologists as “cart chill”—because sitting on your butt doesn’t generate warmth, and zipping around in an open vehicle increases heat loss by convection. Randy Yonce, a reader in Johnston, South Carolina, has devised a two-part solution. The first part is a Coleman GolfCat Catalytic Heater, shown in operation in the photo above. It runs on propane and fits into a cup holder, cutting the in-cart beer count by just one:

Aosta The second part is probably easiest to pull off if someone in your regular group works in a warehouse. Yonce explains: “I despise cart covers because it is so aggravating to keep zipping the doors up and down after every stop. I’ve found that you can use a roll of clear pallet wrapping to help hold heat. Wrap a couple of rounds around the cart and the warm air gets trapped in the upper part. Also, ducking under the wrap is easy.”

Not even pallet wrap would help here in Connecticut. We’ve had so much snow that I’ve been forced to alternate between actually working and watching Olympic curling on TV. I’ve also been killing time on the Web, where I discovered the ideal conveyance for golf buddies trips:

That’s a Boeing 314, which was manufactured between 1938 and 1941. It wasn’t very fast, but it could make it across either ocean, and Pan American Airways had a dozen of them. All those passenger compartments made it easy to separate bickering foursomes, and there was plenty of room for golf bags, and if the course you were playing wasn’t too far from the airport you didn’t necessarily need a hotel:

Why don’t rich guys buy planes like that, instead of miniature jets? Now it’s time for dinner, en route to Hawaii (let’s say):

And now dessert:

Getting there is half the fun. And now, here we are, disembarking for an early tee time on a snow-free golf course on an island paradise:

(If you like that picture, you can order a nice big print, here, from the guy who painted it.)