With frozen dirt road crunching under the car tires, my longtime fishing buddy (and paleontologist) Mike and I pull out of the driveway of my family cottage in New Hampshire for the hour drive north east toward the White Mountains , where an invite we’ve long coveted has us giddy.

It’s to sit on a frozen lake.

Any mention of ice fishing usually comes with a built-in beat of silence, requiring either no explanation at all or eliciting puzzled, are-you-joking comments.

Growing up, ice fishing was the angling of last resort. We’d set our tip-ups — wooden devices that sat in the hole and popped a flag up if a fish took your bait. Then we’d play hockey.

There aren’t many sports so boring that you have to start playing other sports in the middle of them.