Monthly Archives: March 2013

Yeah.  Bluebird Saturday skiing.  A wee bit of wind up on the Mile, but after one run in the icy slopes in the trees, we saw folks going up on the Mile and went for it.  Timberline left the chairs on overnight, so it didn’t take long to get it going.

Temps went from around 26 F to around 40 F by the time we left.  Nice crisp snow though, especially up high on the Mile.  We got in five runs on the Mile, six all told, and probably would have been more except I’m still reteaching my muscles about skiing correctly without flopping around in my boots.

Verdict from today is that the Boot Wars may be on their way to resolution.  I played around with buckle tension, and ended up having good control plus less muscle fatigue–though that clobbered me hard toward the end of our ski day.  The Lange boots are stiffer and more reactive than my old Atomic boots.  But putting in the heel lifts seems to have helped get me just that little bit more forward in the boot, and I’m committing to being more aggressive in manipulating and controlling the boot.  I had good spread in the ball of my feet and what started hanging me up was more in the tightness of the hip flexors rather than the foot flailing around inside the boot.  I even got a bit of spring going in shifting from ski to ski, and when I hit the chopped up, chundered snow I was able to cut right through it instead of wobbling around and fighting.

Now it’s just a question of feet in boots, boots on skis.  Turns on the Mountain.  Building up stamina and strength, retraining muscles out of bad habits.  And rehabbing these damned hips.

Once we were done skiing, we bought tea and coffee and sat on the day lodge’s upstairs deck.

Nice thing to be doing, sitting outside the day lodge on a sunny day, watching other people ski.

Yeah. Gotta love Saturday spring skiing.

Then we came home and my crocus are blooming.  Yay!

Had time to do some household chores, and then spend some time putting together a unit on Manifest Destiny.  Like the concept, the unit is starting to get pretty grandiose.  Let’s see how many different ways the technology can blow up THIS coming week (last week: laptop showed PowerPoint, document camera would not.  Document camera would independently work.  Next day, different laptop, PowerPoints run just fine…with no sound.  Fix that, can play YouTube videos with sound, and the next day?  Laptop cannot read CD-ROM.  That contains the perfect intro videos for Manifest Destiny.  That are not available on YouTube, and everything else I’ve found so far sucks.  Oy.  There Are Reasons I Still Use Paper Resources).

Oh, and nice quiet ride on horse last night.  More on that another time.

So the Boot Wars continue.  Today I rode the Lange Exclusives for the first time in something like four years.

I didn’t die.  Nor did I fall down.

But the experience was…definitely annoying. For one thing, it’s blatantly clear that I’ve picked up some bad foot movement habits from the previous boots.  The feet want to twist and turn in ways they aren’t supposed to twist and turn.  But…the Langes want to throw me into a deeper squat than I find comfortable.  I’m not forward enough and I still have wobble.  That said, I also got the solid feel of a boot that fits and had to spend a lot of time working on scaling down my control, because I was overcontrolling the ski. It was promising, though, to figure out that the foot part probably will work, because that was the problem before.  Now if we can just work on the angles…stopped by the bootfitter and got some heel lifts put in.

Despite the fact that I was working waay too hard, feeling the ol’ thigh burn, and all that good stuff, it was a good ski day.  I took some pictures but not a lot.  Hood itself was clear but the clouds surrounded everything around the Mountain.  There were a couple of moments up on top of the Mile where we spotted Mt. Jefferson, but for the most part, Timberline was a sunny outpost in a sea of clouds.

Damn, I hope I get this boot stuff figured out soon.  I’m tired of fighting my equipment.  I just want to ski….