Sunday Skiing

My first time skiing this season. Hopefully it will be the first of many.

Yes, I ski. I do not snowboard. I don't have anything against snowboarding, except that it's just about useless in cat tracks. You all know it's true.

I woke up early this morning for the second time in the last three days. I'm not sure I've filled my Christmas Break Sleep-In Quota. But I may have to live with that. After grumpily climbing out of bed I began to pack my skiing gear in the back of the car. After some fussing with Mom and some confusion about my boots, we headed up to Bogus Basin. Troy (my friend), Andy (my brother), Brandon (my brother's friend), and I all packed into the car and after nearly an hour of windy roads and Gregorian chants playing from the speakers, we made it.

That picture above may give you a false impression of just what the mountain was like; it was foggy as hell. The visibility was just awful and I could hardly see where I was going. But we skiied anyway, and for the record, we did pretty well. Troy and I split off from Andy and Brandon to shred the mountain as best we could. Our first run after warming up on the bunny hill was into a usually friendly terrain park off the main lift. The problem was, nothing was really done yet, so none of the jumps were there, but near the end of the run it dumped into a hellish bowl filled with moguls and dry patches. After that we played it easy for a while and built up our confidence. So we blazed a trail down the main lift, and guess what? We somehow ended up right back up at that same mogul-stricken bowl off the terrain park. I've got no idea how either.

Frustrated at the difficulty of finding jumps and/or visibility, we sat down for a nice lunch in the lodge. They make really good food. Anyway, following lunch, we went to the backside this time. This time we went off a few black diamonds and got lost a couple of times, and ended up having to ask for directions from a man named John. He kindly showed us how to get back to the frontside, and after bombing down the mountain one last time, we hung up our skiis and snowboards for the day and waited to be picked up.

Or so I thought.

It just so happened that my older brother (Micheal) and his good friend Al was there as well. They called me and Mike told me that he wanted me to take one last run with him. "Can you keep up?" he asked. "Can you?" I replied, laughing. So up on the main lift we went and guess what? I ended up in the same damn bowl as I did the other two times. But this time I ripped it up. I almost kept up with Mike and Al, and that's saying something. You should have seen them, just going down at top speeds. I'm afraid I just don't register on their Crazy-Ass-ometer. Oh well. It was still a good run, and I finished with style.

To a good day of skiing!