No summer vacation is complete without a cooler. On a long trip, you can forget your towel, your medicine, or even one or more of your young children — but you can’t forget the cooler. Every man is a little less of a man if he travels without a cooler packed with ice, Coca-Cola, and sandwiches. It’s the only time of year when you can fight global warming effectively without feeling like you’ve become an idiot.
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Definition
A cooler is a portable insulated container — from the Latin: isos (to cool); thermos (beer) — designed for the temporary (I repeat, temporary) preservation of food and beverages through thermal insulation and the use of refrigerants or ice. You can probably find refrigerant somewhere in your car’s engine, and as for ice, they’ll gladly serve it with any whiskey at a roadside bar. Order as many whiskeys as you need to get enough ice, and you’ll find the drive goes by much faster.
I don’t know what does work, but I can tell you from experience what definitely doesn’t: don’t try opening it with a knife unless you’ve packed a first-aid kit.
The whole point of the device is to keep the temperature inside lower than the temperature outside — in other words, the exact opposite of what you want your underwear to do when you’re traveling to the mountains in winter.
Types
The mechanism of a portable cooler is simple. What distinguishes one cooler from another is its size. When buying one, quickly calculate the capacity you’ll need based on the food and drinks you’re planning to pack. Carefully measure every package and every can, add it all up, and then buy a cooler twice as large as your calculations recommend.
Another distinguishing feature is how dangerous the latch is. Coleman and Igloo generally make coolers with ordinary latches, while Playmate’s distinctive crossover lid offers an extra source of family entertainment: finding out which relative is going to lose a finger this year.
Lately, soft-sided backpack coolers have become fashionable. No man entirely secure in his heterosexuality will ever use one. Women don’t need this warning, because no woman would willingly buy a cooler with military styling, and nearly all cooler backpacks look like they came straight out of a Rambo sequel.
Alternative Uses
Every cooler expert knows the primary alternative use for a cooler is soaking your feet after a long hike. To do this properly, you must hide the cooler somewhere the rest of the family can’t see it. For reasons I don’t fully understand, children suddenly lose their appetite for sandwiches the moment they watch their father cooling his feet inside the cooler.
Things coolers preserve well: bottles of whiskey, aftershave lotion, every kind of cat, pens, explosives, and IRS notices.
Things coolers do not preserve well: ice cream, lit cigarettes, melted cheese, mothers-in-law, motor oil, and steamy biographies of Emmanuel Macron.
Malfunctions
A cooler is considered broken when it fails to keep its contents colder than the outside temperature. But if you take that standard too seriously, you’ll spend your life buying new coolers because, at the end of the day, none of them really manage it.
The fact that coolers don’t actually work isn’t a manufacturing defect, it’s a genetic trait. If coolers actually worked, camping would be much more boring.
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The Cooler in Captivity
The natural habitat of the cooler is the trunk of a car. It has been specifically designed not to fit anywhere.
Coolers and hard-shell suitcases have maintained a bitter rivalry since the days of Christopher Columbus, when it proved impossible to fit both the crates of Spanish wine and the enormous cooler carrying Columbus’s famous egg into the ship’s hold. I don’t remember exactly how that story ended, but I believe Columbus discovered America, the wine ran out, and the egg disappeared.
Every good father follows one simple rule when packing the trunk: cold beer always takes priority over everything else, including the kids’ toys, Mom’s purse, and certain unpopular pets such as snakes and hamsters.
Golden Tip: If forgetting the hamster in its cage on the garage floor causes a diplomatic crisis at home, casually suggest taking it along inside the cooler instead. Suddenly, nobody will want the hamster to come on vacation. Negotiation is an art.
Reasons to Pack All Your Luggage in Coolers
One thing I’ve learned over the years is that the best solution to a problem almost always sounds insane.
My family stopped traveling with suitcases a long time ago and now packs everything in coolers instead. Clothes arrive fresh, liquids that tend to leak — like shampoo or boat-engine oil — spill into something much easier to clean than your shirts, and, above all (though you should never admit this to the rest of the family), it gives you room to smuggle extra cans of beer almost everywhere.
Fun Things To Do With Your Cooler in Winter
Most people keep their cooler from one summer to the next but only use it during the warm months. One of the cooler’s lesser-known winter uses is keeping things warm. Simply replace the ice packs with glowing coals from the fireplace. At least I think that’s how it works. I saw it in a YouTube tutorial, but it was too long, so I only watched the first five seconds.
Another thing you can do is hang the cooler from a tree and wait for penguins to build a nest inside it. Ordinary birds will avoid it because it’s too cold, but birds accustomed to colder climates will be delighted. I’m not entirely sure penguins are birds, but it’s worth trying. If you ever manage to get a penguin living inside your cooler, you’ll have a wonderful story to tell your guests.
When it Won’t Open
Opening a cooler can become a nightmare. They always seem to open and close perfectly at home, but somehow refuse to cooperate once you get to the beach.
I don’t know what does work, but I can tell you from experience what definitely doesn’t: don’t try opening it with a knife unless you’ve packed a first-aid kit; don’t blow the latch off with dynamite unless your last name sounds Arabic; don’t recite the magic words from Ali Baba’s cave; don’t ask the lifeguard for help; and don’t call the manufacturer’s customer service line while you’re standing on the beach under the blazing sun, desperate for a beer, and surrounded by six hungry children.
Those calls are recorded, and it’s a shame the manufacturer preserves for posterity every profanity and every ridiculous threat describing exactly where (and by what route) you’d like to insert the cooler into the customer service rep.
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