In addition to the famed Teddy Roosevelt Museum, there is in the Hamlet of North Creek, in the Town of Johnsburg, Warren County, New York, Gore Mountain, a ski and outdoor recreation area with a gondola.

It is not like the gondolas of Venice, which ply the waters of the fabled canals. It is more like a cable car. But it is not like the cable cars of San Francisco, which ride on tracks on the city’s hills, and go up and over and down. Instead, the Gore gondola floats in the air hung from a cable, and it goes up and down but not over.

If you are a snow skier you should ride the Gore gondola, because then you can ride up and ski down, and ride up and ski down, and ride up and ski down and have loads of winter fun all the live long day.

But if you are not a skier, then you shouldn’t ride the Gore gondola in the winter, when its icy cold, unless you dress really warm, with at least heavy wool socks and lined winter boots, and wool pants and a wool shirt and a wool sweater and a wool coat and a wool cap to cover your ears, and long johns, too.

Especially don’t forget the long johns. Because it is really, really cold in the winter riding the Gore gondola up in the air, where the cold is all around, and over and under you, and the Gore gondola car is unheated, and once you are in, and on your way up, you can’t get out, and even when you do reach the top, you dare not get out, because it is cold and windy way up there on the mountain top, and there is no way down, unless you are a skier.

I’m speaking from experience, and what went up (me), had to come down, and it is colder going down than it is going up, because you are already frozen head to toe, and it is frigid cold, unbearably cold, and you are still stuck in the Gore gondola, and there is still no way out, and you just must grin and bear it and freeze your little tooshie off because the unheated seat is even colder than the air around you..

That was the coldest I’ve ever been, and it’s what I got for riding the Gore gondola in the middle of winter when I’m not a skier, and I didn’t have my woolens and long johns on. This experience taught me not to do that again.

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