Cold!

So, imagine one foot is sliding on ice, but the other one is slogging through wet cement. Now take the temperature down to 15 (fahrenheit, my Canadian friends), cue the howling wind, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of what skiing was like yesterday. There was plenty of snow, but it had all been blown off the trails. Tops of crests were all sketchy, and the powder you could find was all very very dense. I asked a guy what Free Fall — the only diamond I do at Mount Snow — was like, and he pronounced it, “Weird.” He said people were doing it once and not doing it again. I am all about the better part of valor, so I gave it a pass. But I did find one of my favorite trails open for the first time this season, and since it is surpassingly narrow there is nowhere for its snow to blow, and in fact it was deep in piles of crud and fantastically fun and hard work to get down, so I blasted through that one four times before calling it a day. I went like an amateur, which I paid for, deciding to put off lunch and just get all my skiing in first. Dumb. I bonked seriously, despite a packet of Gu and much hydration. Dumb, dumb, dumb. No idea what I was thinking. Anyway, by the end, I had a better time than I had expected, but really, I just don’t need to go when there’s been three days of wind.

Stopped at the Y on the way home to soak my legs, which were sore (haven’t been doing my stretches). Was tempted by the sign that declared the big pool is finally back up to temperature, but after freezing my face off all morning, decided the hot tub was the only place for me.

Heard from an old old friend from college days, which was a real pleasure. We were tight for a couple of years, and in fact he put us up when we were apartment-less for a month early in our marriage, and taught me the importance of nightly ice cream. I still have a bunch of pages of old college and high school photos up with people’s full names on them, so occasionally when they Google themselves, they find me — not what I intended, but a nice benefit.