I Could Be a Ski Bum

I was up about 15 minutes earlier than Saturday morning. It was 8am. Damn! Can’t believe I slept that late again. Must’ve been tired after all that skiing and drinkin’. I fumbled around in the dark looking for all of my running gear, which I thought I did a decent job of laying out before falling asleep. But once again, I didn’t lay out my cold weather accessories like, gaiter, winter gloves, and hat. I ended up heading out with my late autumn coverage instead. I stopped by the complimentary continental breakfast buffet for a quick gulp of coffee before setting out. It was cold once more. I ran the same route as Saturday. My head was in a fog until the turnaround. The cold air woke me up. I felt terrific by the time that I made it back. I stopped in for more coffee after my run. Sitting alone in the formal gathering area, I spotted Mary Ann doing the same. I called her over. We chatted a bit before heading back to our room. The hot tub sounded good in lieu of a shower but the maintenance guy had just shocked it. It wouldn’t be open for a while. Crap! Back in the room, Mindy was just finishing up her shower. I offered the available shower to Mary Ann, but she opted out of one. I took one next. Before hitting the slopes, we packed our gear and loaded the Honda. Bob checked us out of the room around 10am. We planned to ski until 2pm then hit the road for home. We headed up the Sunrise lift for our initial run. Everybody did better than Saturday AM. And just as he did all weekend, Bob served as the ‘cruise director’ mapping out a plan that would take us out and then bring us back in. We made our way to the western edge of the ski village skiing many of our favorite runs. Mindy mentioned being ravenously hungry atop the Spruce Line lift. Lucky for her I had some cheese and sausages in my coat. I asked if she could wait until we skied down but she said no. I gave her some cheese but couldn’t get the sausage opened in the cold. We skied to the Yodeler lodge and took a snack/beer break. Bob and I had an EBC Pale Ale. The girls had water. Mindy fetched snack – fries, hot dog, and brownie. I ate a lot of the sausages I had stashed in my coat pocket. I didn’t bother tapping into my Goldschlager. I had to drive later and was mindful of that. We finished our break around 1230pm. We had 1.5 hours left to have fun. We made the most of it, too. We all skied a black diamond. I think it was called ‘Firecracker’. I thought Mindy & Mary Ann would take the easier, blue trail down but looking back up from the bottom that wasn’t the case. They were gracefully zig-zagging their way down the more challenging black trail. Cool! We skied another four or five runs before it was time to head back to the Inn for the car. Bob & I took one last black diamond run. I almost skipped it thinking why risk injury now, but didn’t. It was an exhilarating run. At the bottom, I felt a little sad that our skiing was over. I’m sure everyone did. We had an absolute blast! We loaded all of our ski gear into the Honda and then drove to rental returns. Mary Ann went with Mindy & I to return our gear. Afterwards we went for some Starbucks coffee at the nearby coffee house. We hit the road for home at about 2:50pm. The weather driving home was terrific. Terrific that is until we got just north of Columbus. The irony is that our trip took us through the snow belt (NE Ohio, NW PA & New York). No snow or bad weather going either direction. According to those we communicated with in Columbus on our trip back home, they were hit with an unexpected snow storm. We hit the tail end of it as we approached town from the north. We got the Imber’s home by 8pm. It didn’t take us long to free their gear and hit the road for home. After unloading all of our gear, Mindy reinstalled the kiddie seats while I shoveled the drive. Jimaken brought Jacob & Bella home just as I finished up the shoveling. I left to fetch Rocky & Landon at 845pm. I arrived at Kelly’s by 9pm to pick-up the boys. They were a little sad, confused, but everything was fine once we got home. We didn’t bother with baths. Mindy got them into their jammies and then tucked into bed. After the kids were in bed, Mindy & I unpacked our gear in all of about fifteen minutes. We didn’t get everything put in its proper place but we accomplished quite a bit just he same. And certainly got everything put away that we considered vital. We were in bed by 10:10pm. Wow, what whirlwind day.