Early Friday morning, I received the following message from my dad:

“Me and Finger are heading south for the weekend looking for golf. Heading about three hours down in Ohio. You’ve gotta come home and watch the dog.”

Imagine a grown man on an impromptu road trip, suctioned to the window of a car like a stuffed Garfield, in search of fairways and greens in a very Davey Jonesian fashion. This man is my father.

Without having ever met him, the message quoted above should mean very little to most, so allow me to explain. He is obsessed with golf. He eats because if malnourished he suffers off the tee; sleeps because if tired his backswing is lax. Breathing is merely an avoidance of suffocation, which hinders his ability to read a green accurately. Putting is his passion. The short-game, his Mona Lisa.

Thursday night’s unseasonably late snowstorm threatened to deprive him and his Mafioso nicknamed partner in crime, “Finger,” of yet another weekend hitting the links. Rather than let a little five-inch accumulation spoil his plans, he hopped in a car equipped with no more than a set of TaylorMades and all-weather golf gloves, banking on a weatherman’s promise that beyond Michigan’s borders lie verdant hills with nary a snowflake in sight. A regular Magellan that dad of mine.

He managed to play 63 holes in 32 hours … and 42 degree temperatures. I expected nothing less from the man who two weeks previous had bragged of a “great shot off the ice” to avoid a penalty stroke.

While it would be easy to dismiss this as an isolated case of insanity, as we all know such occurrences are far too common to do so. My dad’s is but one extreme in the many cases of Michigan Madness.

Michigan Madness exhibits itself shortly after winter’s end in the weeks leading up to summer. I like to call this time the “season formerly known as spring” or SOKAS. The madness begins with the annual practice of Michiganders forgetting that the temperature won’t actually rise until the beginning of May. SOKAS is just as cold and miserable as the winter that preceded it, but when you’ve got the madness, you’re oblivious to this.

Madness sufferers don’t learn from past experience. Every year they’re fooled by the flip flop pushing Capri-clad dancing robots on Old Navy commercials who promise that the months of indoor isolation are over. Just as my dad and Finger expect to be on the golf course by the third week of March, madness victims plan picnics, camping trips, and baseball games despite a 2 percent chance of weather conducive to such activities. When it’s 38 and windy, they carry on with the plans.

Such actions would get one committed in January. During SOKAS, however, it’s just another long-john wearing, hand-warmer clutching hypothermia fighting afternoon in the park. It’s nothing short of delirium. Bedlam by way of baseball.

The madness is all around us. How it ever started is unknown. Witnessing spring sport athletes practice around piles of ice and snow in the past few weeks negate my previous theory of it being linked to old age and senility. Whatever its cause, the madness isn’t going anywhere until May, when SOKAS officially ends.

So grab your board shorts, SPF 30, a canteen of hot chocolate, and book a tee time while there’s still room. It’s supposed to be a balmy 45 this weekend; perfect for all your outdoor pleasures.