Okay, enough weekend!

First, I broke my older daughter while we were playing hooky. The key to playing hooky, as anyone knows, is not to do something that will result in your being found out. It’s a little hard to say you went to a funeral but show up for work the next day in a cast. Well, no cast for Hannah, but a seriously strained shoulder that will need additional attention tomorrow, cutting into yet another day of school. Oops.
Then last night we had a little incident with pieces of glass in my malted milkshake. Not big ones, not sharp ones, mostly, but pieces of glass nonetheless. Caught two in my mouth, as they seemed like particularly hard pieces of malt (not through the straw; I was spooning the remains). One went down. I thought. I wasn’t sure. But by the time I got home, I was sure, there was definitely something caught in my throat. Excellent. Luckily, I’ve watched lots of TV movies about bulimia, so now I know how to have a chocolate shake and still keep the pounds off.
Then this morning, with only Rebekah in tow for skiing, we head off to Pittsfield, MA, to Bousquet Ski Area, where the girls have their weekly ski lessons. As we roll into Lebanon Center, the closest thing to a town between here and Pittsfield, there are flashing lights, firetrucks and a roadblock. I am summarily shunted down a lane-and-a-half road that was last paved by the Works Progress Administration (motto: “We Do Ruts Right”). I gamely follow this detour from Route 20 for a couple of miles until I lose faith that it is going to ever take me anywhere I want to go. So I find a wide spot and turn back. At the intersection, I ask the woman flagging traffic how I can get through to Pittsfield. This apparently is the most puzzling thing she’s ever heard. She is standing on the main road between New York and Massachusetts, Route 20, the Boston Post Road. Just a little way down the road is a sign that says Pittsfield is a mere 10 miles away. But that anyone would want to use this now-closed road to get to Pittsfield is so confusing to her that she asks me my destination three times. She asks whether I don’t have to go up over the mountain to get there. I allow as that’s true, and that the only road over the mountain that I know is Route 20. This flusters her further. She cannot help. She directs me to the trooper parked a little way down the way. So I turn back onto Route 20, now pointed back the way I came, stop across from the trooper, and tell him I’m trying to get to Pittsfield, and I don’t know how to go with Route 20 blocked. This conversation ensues:
“Where are you trying to go?”
“Pittsfield.”
“You’re headed the wrong way.”
“I know. I hit the roadblock and then turned around. I don’t know how far up the road is closed.”
“Where are ya coming from?” This is a pure cop question. They always need to know where you’re coming from. And although it has nothing to do with where I’m going, I tell him because not telling him is only going to make this worse.
“East Greenbush. I’m just trying to get to Pittsfield, but I don’t know another way around.”
“Pittsfield?” Again, as if I were asking directions to Santa Monica. It’s the only thing resembling a city in the area. It is right on the major route through the area, the very road across which we are having this conversation. It is TEN MILES AWAY.
“Yes, Pittsfield.”
“Well, if you go out here and then make the right, won’t that bring you back out?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t know how far up the road is closed, and I don’t know the back roads.”
“It’ll bring you out by the Hess Station, right?”
There’s no point anymore in saying that I don’t know. I just agree, spin the truck around, and try the detour again. Patience is rewarded, there IS a right turn (though most of the road had been going off in entirely the wrong direction), and then another, and when I pop out on Route 20, I am right in the middle of the blocked-off area. Which apparently gives me license to proceed, as I am waved on through and am off on my way. I have no idea what happened, and I don’t care, but that’s two times I have found myself somehow stuck in Lebanon Center, and that’s two times too many, no matter how short the duration. (The last time was 1985, the Fuego had a dead alternator and a dead battery, and Lee and I whiled away an entire summer day sitting outside a garage in Lebanon Center waiting for our battery to get enough of a charge to chance a run back to the Capital District.)

Skiing was good but cold. I attacked the diamonds, including one I had never tried before. I figured out why. Even though I had a plan for it, and it was a straightforward run, midway through it was so steep that I just lost my ability to slow myself and had to buckle in and take the ride. Still alive, though! Bek did well, we took two early runs and one after lessons and then we were done. It was 35 degrees but damp and windy windy windy, so we were fairly freezing.