Sometimes, no matter how musical you feel, and how much you're used to walking/singing around with your uke in hand, the cold wins; "it's far too freezing to play ukulele".
That's definitely the case in Rimouski, by the icy banks of the gusty St Laurent River in Québec. Not only is it far colder than what you imagine the coldest place on the planet feels like, but snow storms might just suprise you at any moment.
However, for the diehard bard, there's a workaround. "Just put your gloves on, that will do quite nicely".
It's impossible to train your fingers to resist the harsh cold winds of North-Western Gaspesia "... they'll turn blue and surely fall off before the second refrain".
Much more realistic is to train yourself to play with skiing gloves.
"Just major chords here in Rimouski", because due to the super-complicated technique - sticking out one single finger on the left hand and just moving up and down the ukulele - you can only play major chords. Except for an A (minor) "But it's okay it's not that tricky anyway".
When it's below 0 degrees Kelvin, as it is, most Winters on the beaches here, you don't sit around inside complaining anyway. You (snow-)suit up, get out there, and leave the whining and the minor chords to people in warmer climates.
Everything with gloves and a ukulele, just sounds rainbow-y and so very merry. I don't think there's much more I can do, I could change the key, (insert change of Key here), but I'll just go with the woop-di-doos (actually, cancel it) - woop-di-doo, woop-di-doo, woop-di-doo...
The other side of the camera on the banks of le Saint Laurent. A wild ukulele huddles in the grass nearby.
The wider point being, I guess, that "boredom is a luxury, like memes that say 'oh FML!' and a suite of minor chords, but in the North", well, as some locals mentioned to me, you just get on with it, really. And if in other countries, you'd stay home because of a temperature half this cold outside, here, you deal with it and go out anyway, otherwise you'll never step outdoors ever again.
If you want to learn more about the town of Rimouski from the locals, head over to the Rimouski Ukulele Road Trips podcast! [coming soon-ish]. It's got two locals, exactly as many jokes, and songs too.
Une soupe au "Bercail" ! That's at the cool co-op near the Cathedral, in case you're just on your way through the cold winds to the center of town too.
No need to be too fanatical and brave, and after a sing-along on the freezing beaches, a warm onion soup is a most comforting treat.
Speaking of warm comfort, you can support the trip over on the Patreon, which is a bit like showing appreciation with thumbs up, except on Patreon, it's not only nice, it's useful.
The #GoingNorth adventure is made possible with a helping string from the folks at Cloud Music ukuleles whose ukes withstand pretty low temperatures quite well as it turns out.