Great Expectations

As a teacher, I set my expectations high.  This was done in hopes of challenging those at the top, setting goals and prompting those students that were most like myself, and inspiring those that needed a push.  As a middle aged skier, and I use those adjectives with pride and distain in the same breath, you need to set your expectations high as well.  Sure, we could go out on the slopes of Copper Mountain and get by, but who does that?  We want to look good, have fun, and not hurt ourselves in the process (emphasis on the lookin' good part!).  so how do we start our day... Snoqualmie blueberry pancakes is how.  Plate sized, hot off the  stove, butter drenched, light to medium brown, hold your stomach it hurts so good, punched with plump juicy blueberries, and drizzled with Log Cabin syrup pancake bundles of heaven.  That's how.  (refer to Sept. 2012..."On a Mission" for visual stimuli)

With breakfast packed away, and I do mean packed, Miki and I started layering on any chances for warmth we would have until lunch.  But with the breakfast above, lunch would be more of a snack than anything else.  The last step of prep work for getting to the ski lift and onto the mountain is placing both feet in ski boots.  It has never been the easiest of feets feats for me to accomplish without wincing facial expressions and an inordinate number of bodily sounds to aid in the effort.  Once on, the boots fit like a glove, but the activity itself is under the category of chore for me.  You skiers out there know what I am talking about, don't you pretend your feet glide in with smiley faces attached.

We are full, we are layered, our feet are set in concrete, we are ready to hit the slopes.... one more thing.  Besides the plethora of items we (me) take along with us in various pockets, we must dawn our ski lift passes.  Ours are like I.D. badges you may have at work and are zip-tied on to something on the front of your jacket, so the lift operators can scan your barcode and see that you are legit.  In my excitement of the moment and the anticipation of almost having the mountain to ourselves, I zip-tied my badge to my lower of the two zippers that control the front of my coat.  The top zipper is the primary opener and closer, while the lower zipper can be used to unzip the jacket from the bottom up if so desired.  So now my badge is dangling like a virtual fig leaf, as if I were Adam in THE garden, being the humble man I try to be.  What a newbie thing to do.  As you go through the lift line to get on the lift, the operators grab your pass to position it to be scanned with their little handheld scanner machine.  Not to embarrass myself or them, now I have to grab it myself and lift it up and make it readily available for my scan.  I did get more than the ordinary number of sincere thank yous... and I did reposition my pass during our lunch break, thank you very much!

It started out as a partly cloudy day on the mountain and by 11:00, as predicted, the clouds thickened up and snow began to lightly fall.  We have never been skiing with so few skiers sharing the same real estate.  It was awesomeness.

Our condo is a "ski-in, ski-out" place, so we can literally ski almost to
the doors that we use to enter our condo building.  This is the Super Bee
lift, a sand wedge shot away from our place.

Looking back up one of the runs we just came down, you
can see how not busy it is...did I say awesomeness already?

After getting our ski legs under us and getting the lay of the trails, we headed in for a lunch break.  A little "Porky's" BBQ was chased down with some brownies before heading back out to test the inch of snow that had fallen in the past hour.

The lunch of Champions!  Okay, maybe middle aged, retired skiers.

The view out our window (to the parking lot)... you can't have everything.

With the weather conditions as they were, yeah snow!  The visibility deteriorated to where it was harder to see where you were going and we called it quits, because we wanted to live to ski another day with all our original equipment in tact.  So what do old skiers do when getting off the hill for the day...

...that's right...flaunt whatcha got at the outdoor hot tub baby.  Have you ever walked through snow in flip flops?  How about hopped in and out of a hot tub to set the timer on your camera to take stupid pictures for a friggin' blog.  Thank goodness for hot water!  As each snowflake blessed our heads as it fell from the sky, we watched and made fun of all the skiers as they made their way down each run from our "womb with a view."  And no I am not covered in snow, that is my winter skin color.

We grabbed our gear and headed in as things began to shrivel and shrink looking for warmth.  And like all good skiers after coming off the mountain, we cleaned up and headed for the local Walmart.

Just left of center is an orange speck, just below the treeline along the lake.
 It is connected to a black dot, just below it and to the left.  Together they
make a kite skier on frozen Lake Dillon.

We have now officially crashed for the night after a dinner of nachos and bad TV.  More snow is forecast for the over night hours.  We are keeping all digits crossed and expecting good snow and good lighting tomorrow, to see well enough to maneuver in and around it.  Chow!



My Zen from the Slopes:  Skiing, like anything you do when you do it well, feels good.  Miki is a good skier and looks good as she glides back and fourth across the snow.  She likens it to dancing.  Me, I weave in and out of dancing and controlled chaos as I work my way down the mountain.  I must say that over the years of skiing though, I am dancing more than creating scared looks by onlookers.  So, if you enjoy doing something, forget how you look.  It is about having fun and enjoying what you are doing and who you are with.  Now, if you can do that and look good doing it, then you just added the icing on the cake, but the cake is still good without the icing!