Christmas break '07

here's the moose playing with his thomas the train, trainset-made of real wood (that's what the box said)! he was in the play zone. christmas was pretty cool this year. very mellow, we didn't have to travel anywhere and the kids were pretty happy with what they received (even though we try and enforce to them that receiving stuff isn't nearly as important as giving stuff-note to self: good luck with that!). the weather has been pretty typical december weather up at 8800'. had to run the atv with the blade attachment several times. no biggy. right now though, the weather forecasters are saying we might receive 8" of snow today. christmas day, my in-laws and brother in-law and melissa's uncle and niece came down. it was a lot of fun. i taught her niece how to operate the atv and she plowed our driveway (her idea of fun). for entertainment, we played with maricel's dance dance revolution. or as maura calls it, "dance dance elution". melissa's cousin put on a dancing demonstration as we were no where close to her high scores. grandma busted a jig too. it was pretty fun hanging out with them. today, melissa's home sick and we're chilling with single digit temperatures all around us. that's okay because i stocked up on wood the night before and yours truly already started a nice, rip-roaring fire this morning. my birthday's round the corner too, y'all got anything for me?

First ski of the season with Alec @ Keystone

woa. again, the holy trinity of skiing (christians, forgive me...) with my homey, alec. which is: no lines, blue skies, and fresh powder (i can't stand it when people call powder pow-pow, makes 'em sound like poseurs). we left 6'ish from the evergreen park and ride expecting some hellish road conditions. it was icy. some numnuts in an lx 470 was sitting shotgun in the center median, high curbed by the snow, before the eisenhower tunnel. so i never exceed 55 mph all the way from evergreen and we arrive at the lot, right next to the red river entrance, with an hour to spare. i couldda hokked a loogy from my truck and it would've hit the gondola we were so close. dats right. we had a small breakfast at a joint called inkspot before the breakfast crowd came in. while eating, we talked about how out-of-the-box-thinking and sonically eccentric russian composers were and alec revealed he was into stravinski. the only stravinski i knew were the rite of spring and the firebird suite. pretty erratic and uniquely russian, no sing-songy stuff here.
anyhoo my first day on my new skis, the volkl karma's, and we head straight over to the outback. my first run consisted of ungroomed, fluffy powder, where i fell straightaway and had to have alec help me up because it was kinda deep. not a good start to get your skiing legs to have the ski-feel.
alec's sick day is equal to my normal ski day and that was the case today. even then when we were hitting the runs he attacked it like fat albert in line at country buffet. i kinda make my s-turns in no particular haste but we arrive at the same place with aplomb usually. that boy can ski.
the slopes had a power outage so the lifts were running on diesel. not the normal.
okay my skis. i was pleasantly surprised. alec has the k2 analog (public enemy) to my ski, so he told me of her characteristics in certain conditions and what type of effort i need to put her on edge (which is little effort). she was awesome. alec also said that it's confident on icy patches. sho'nuff it was. it's an exceptional ski and for the quasi powder in the bumps it was bulldozer-like pushing the extraneous hydrogen hydroxide out of my fall line. amazingly maneuverable in the bumps, and is escalade-like in the groomers. lovely it was.
as the day progressed, we were in chill mode and we were practicing our backwards skiing taking advantage of the twin tips. around 12:30 with alec's aerobic capacity cut in half with his cold and my legs made of balsa wood we bailed after a spirited run down red river-icy patches and all.
i like hanging with alec, he's a young kid ahead of his peers' years, can hang with any conversational permutation, and the girls dig him. the trip back to evergreen was slow and we listened to new stuff from our ipods. i was particularly intrigued by his band called sea and cake.
pictured are my inner boots liberated from their shells so that everything can dry so no mold or dry rot'll occur once they sit again for another coon's age until i can go skiing again. i've never had a bad day with alec. check out my previous blog tomfoolering with alec last ski season in breck.