Historically, I'm not the kind of guy
who has had to give much thought to heated seats, heated outboard
mirrors or heated steering wheels in cars. I mean, I lived in South
Florida for 25 years, for crying out loud.
This is what January in South Florida typically looks like. |
Admittedly, living for years in an area
where the monthly average low for January – historically the
coldest month of the year in Palm Beach County – is a balmy
57-degrees can make a winter weenie out of the hardiest of
northerners. And that's the low. The average high is 75-degrees. It's
small wonder that every time the temp drops below 70, furnaces kick
on all over Florida's Gold Coast, as people ransack their closets
searching for sweaters and leather jackets they haven't laid eyes on
since the last time the mercury dropped to 68-degrees a year earlier.
Needing to don sweat pants rather than
swimsuits to sit out by the pool incites whining that echoes all the
way to Jacksonville.
I was one of those people – well,
except I didn't own a leather jacket then.
The good news for folks in such climes:
The cable-knit sweater purchased 10 years ago is still in good shape.
That's what happens when you only wear an item three times a year.
Even living in the foot hills of the Blue Ridge Mountains where we do
get a winter of sorts – much more of one this year than any in the
seven years I've lived here – my winter clothes don't get much of a
workout.
Here I am standing atop a glacier in 1999 or 2000. I still have every piece of clothing in this photo -- including the socks -- and they are all still in very good shape! |
I have photos of myself from 15 years
ago in cold-weather clothing that I still have. A couple of my
sweaters are showing their age, but for the most part, I haven't had
to chuck any winter apparel due to wear in two decades.
But we've had some record lows in
Greenville this year with temps dipping into the single digits. Thank
God, Al Gore invented global warming or we'd really be in deep
doodoo.
The "Great Greenville Blizzard of 2007": It dumped a whopping four inches of snow at my house. |
So, although I went years and years in
Florida without ever once wishing the test car I was currently in had
a heated steering wheel, or heated seats for that matter, I certainly
do now. Of course, I also have to run the furnace, which I never did in South Florida either.
As a recovering South Floridian, I am
even a bit more sensitive to temps hovering around the point of
freezing. The only thing worse than sliding between the sheets in my
bed at night in this kind of weather is sliding into the ice-like
slab of a leather car seat when it's 12-degrees outside; followed by
grabbing an equally frigid leather-wrapped steering wheel.
Holy snikies that's cold!
A prayer answered: the heated steering wheel and seats buttons in the all-new Kia Cadenza. |
Suddenly I've been converted. Now the
first thing I do after climbing behind the wheel of a freshly
delivered test car is search for the heated-seat icon imprinted on a
toggle. Once I've located that, my search expands to identifying the
control for a heated steering wheel – the greatest invention since
scoopable cat litter.
I have been very lucky in recent weeks
to have had a number of vehicles equipped with both these life-saving
features, as well as a few more with just heated seats.
The 2014 Ram 1500. |
Currently I have a Dodge Ram 1500 with
both functions. Last week I had an Audi Q7 crossover with both,
overlapping a Kia Cadenza that also had the ability to keep both my
hands and keister toasty.
This has become a big deal in my
day-to-day living as the temperature remains stubbornly around the
freezing mark.
Heated features in cars make me, well,
happy.
It takes so little any more.
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