Ugh . . .

Well, this officially sucks.  There's nothing to talk about.  Thanksgiving went well, I guess.  I ate way too much food blah blah blah.  Went to a spin class on Friday, went for a short walk in the Albany Pine Bush yesterday.  I'm having trouble coming up with good things to write.  I feel like if I was out west, I'd be ripping it up, and able to report on all my adventures.  Here's some shots from random resorts that I just typed into the web browser:

 Pic from Squaw Valley Website

 Pic from Snowbird Website

Why not me?!!?  I mean, it's not like it looks that great (to be completely honest), but at this point, ANY skiing is preferable to what I have now (no skiing, and not a very good chance of skiing until MAYBE this weekend).  I'm starting to get a little depressed.  Some new rules at Gore are adding to the general feeling of malaise as well.  I don't really want to get into it, but let's just say that it will make everything a lot more of a pain in the ass than it already is.  Add in the parking situation (which doesn't really affect me because I'm forced to park in east bumblefuck anyway to make more room for the "guests"), and I'm thinking that the entire Gore experience this year might not be so fantastic.  If only I could win some sort of contest and move out west . . .

Boredom

You know, having every other Monday off is awesome . . . Unless there's nothing to do.  Continued warm weather in the east is making this "skiing" blog awful hard to write.  Sample post: "Instead of skiing today, I raked leaves.  That is all."  Once again, I feel compelled to post a video of how life could be (if I was living in Whistler, BC):





Ugh.

Snowmaking at Gore has begun . . .

Photo From Gore Mountain Website

Sick . . .

I haven't been feeling too well lately (some type of flu), so I haven't been posting as much as I should.  It's just a general body shutdown . . . I probably deserve it because I haven't been doing anything lately but sitting on my ass, eating too much, and drinking beer.  Ugh. . .

There is a teeny tiny bit of good news. . .  Gore has posted a Facebook message that reads:

We WILL open Black Friday

 So, hopefully they can follow through.  Looking at the weather, though, it doesn't look so good.  I feel like "climate change" is mostly going to lop off the beginning and the end of the ski season (during my lifetime), and it might actually be worse out west than it is here (I feel like there will be less precipitation in the west, more in the east - though a lot of the precip in the east will come down as rain because of the warming).  But out west, they have a lot more of a cushion with regard to how much they can lose.  If we lose 20% of our snowfall, Gore will get 130 inches next year.  If Alta loses 20%, they still have 540 inches.  So I'm still thinking the future of skiing (and hopefully my life) is out west.

Almost here . . .

I feel like it's getting close (never mind that today was 65 degrees).  I was driving by Hunter Mountain the other day for my real job, and I snapped this pic of some snow that had fallen on Thursday night:

Then, after a day of being hungover on Saturday (ugh . . . I should stop drinking so much), we hiked Prospect Mountain on Sunday with Ace's brother:

Then,  we cruised over to Hickory, where they were having an open house/brewfest.  I don't know if I'm going to get up there too much this year (Gore always seems to call my name on Powder Days - free ticket, I know the mountain really well, and I always seem to find someone to ski with).  But Hickory looked pretty decent:

Then, Ace and I took advantage of the nice weather today to go on a 30 mile road bike ride on the Mohawk-Hudson Bike Trail (beautiful).  So it's all pumping me up for ski season.  I'm putting my new ski boots now to further break them in.  I might ski Killington next week (if my job doesn't get in the way).  Let's do this! 

Cold Comfort for Change

I like to read a lot of blogs, and sometimes I get mad when they haven't been updated in a few days (or weeks).  But then I started my own blog, and I realized why.  And the reason is kind of depressing:  For a great majority of a person's life, nothing really happens.  I mean, I could go into detail about what is happening at work (cool stuff, actually.  I spent Monday and Tuesday on a boat tooling around Lake Champlain), or what is happening in the world (mid-term elections . . . Zzzzzzz . . .), or what I'm doing around the house (mostly picking up leaves), but there really isn't anything THAT interesting.  And that's kind of sad.  But I have a theory about why this is.

I've been formulating this theory for a while, and I actually started writing a screenplay (a ski movie of course) based on this idea.  Throughout a person's life, they make decisions.  The decisions have various consequences, but as people age, they generally fall into the trap of trading security for spontaneity, comfort for craziness, and protectionism for pizazz.   When I used to live in an apartment, I had the ability to up and move whenever I wanted.  I decided to buy a house, and now I'm tied down to a mortgage, maintenance, and upkeep.  When I had a crappy job at Target (and a fun job ski instructing), it wouldn't matter if I just left one day, never to return.  Now, kind of tied down to my job (it's such a good job, and I definitely want to stay until I'm vested in the retirement system).  In these cases (and many others), I made a decision to change, thinking that my life would be better, but I've decreased my ability to just get out and go.  Doing the things that people are "supposed" to do in their life seems to have put me in a cage.

So day to day life has become a boring consequence of decisions I made earlier.  Go to work to pay the bills, pick up the leaves to maintain equity, pay some money to fund my retirement.  Are these the kind of things that are fun to read about in a blog?  No!  You know what would be fun to read about in a blog?  Me contemplating a trip to Europe for Oktoberfest.  Me wondering which ski area parking lot I'm going to park my rig in for the winter.  Me stepping out my door to the first powder day of the season. 

I've been trying to decide what form I want this blog to take.  There are a lot of Ski blogs that are generic ski news sites ("Mammoth has 3 new Snowcats!", "Killington Opens on November 13th!").  And there are some ski blogs that tell a story ("Skiing in the Shower", on my blogroll on the right, tells a pretty compelling story of a woman trying to make the PSIA Alpine Demo Team and sacrificing a lot to do so).  I'm hoping that this site will be like the latter.  While I might not be in touch with my emotions (or even a very good writer), I'm hoping that this blog will chronicle a transformation.  I want to change from somebody that has something exciting happen every few days to someone who lives every day like an adventure.  I want the adventure to never stop, and for every blog post to make you say "Wow . . . I wish I was there."

Season of Waiting

Okay, first things first.  Ace worked out a part time schedule with her job, and she's pumped.  They can't dick her around anymore (they routinely expected her to work 50-60 hours a week and not get paid for it), and she only has to deal with that noxious work environment for 28 hours a week.  The downside is that she's losing her health insurance, so I have to put her on my plan (an extra $100 or so a month).  She had a meeting with the Ski Team and the parents yesterday and she loved it.  She seems a lot happier these days, and if you are to believe what everyone says, happy wife = happy life.

I'm still waiting for some snow to start falling.  That Sunday River opening was a tease, and no other mountains look to be opening in the immediate future.  Too bad, because I have a few days off coming up around Veteran's day, and Ace has the days off too (she has to use up all of her comp time before she switches to the part time schedule).  We were thinking of skiing, but if we can't, maybe we'll do a short little trip to the Finger Lakes and go to some wineries.

I want snow, though!!!  This is definitely the worst time of year to live in the east.  Even though I know it's going to be a sweet season coming up, I always think of how much better the season would be if I lived in Jackson (or somewhere similar).  It ruins my good thoughts!!  Also, if I lived out west, I would already be skiing.  Look at these shots:

Photo from A-Basin website (look at the Mountain Goats!)

 

Photo from Silverton Mountain website

The Waiting is the Hardest Part

Ugh.

I hate this time of year.  Too cold to do anything outside, but no snow on the ground (yet) for skiing.  It's freaking depressing.  Picking up leaves, waking up in the dark, cold rain . . . Forget it.  I mean, maybe if the Mets were in the baseball playoffs, it would be a different story.  But who do we have this year?  The Yankees and Phillies?  Ugh.  If I ever plan a sweet Caribbean sailing vacation (I suddenly have the urge to do this after reading this series of posts on Slate), remind me to schedule it for around this time of year.  It will be perfect.  Leave here around October 20, get back around November 10th (after Daylight Savings time gives us an extra hour), and start skiing the following weekend.  Now if I could only get someone to pick up all my leaves . . .

Buck Mountain

We did Buck Mountain this past weekend.  Good Times.  Then we had the Ski School Informational meeting, where they dropped a couple of bombshells on us (no freeskiing in uniform at all, change in pay structure, etc.).  It might be a kind of depressing season.  Or, if Ace leaves her job, it might be a sweet season!  I guess we'll have to see.  Pics from Buck:

Plans for the future . . .

I go through a struggle in my mind every once in a while and it goes like this:  Every time I think about moving out west [to a ski town (Jackson, Breck, Truckee),or a pseudo-ski town (Bend, Bozeman, Santa Fe) or a ski city (Boulder, Denver, or SLC)], I always say something like, "Well, I'll move out west eventually, but right now, I just refinanced my house, and I should wait a couple of years to rebuild some equity before I make any moves".  Or, "I only have to work for 2 more years until I'm vested in the retirement system at work, so I'll wait until then to move."  I'm okay with this now (those seem to be good reasons), but will it keep going like this?  I mean, will there always be something trying to keep me here?  My parents are retiring in 2011 and moving down to Carolina, so at that point, I really won't have anything keeping me in the area (besides my job and house, that is).  And my job is good.  Will I be able to find a comparable job out west?  I don't know.

I just hope that I don't keep saying to myself "Two more years", "Three more years", "Five more years", then find myself still kicking around this area when I'm 50 wondering why I never moved out west.  So, hopefully I can develop a plan soon and stick to it.