Yeah, I know. Y’all don’t wanna hear about skiing.
Too bad. You’re gonna hear about skiing.
So Friday was ski day number ten this season. Not too great for February 10 to only be the tenth day, even if I’m only skiing weekends. But that’s just a reflection of the sort of season it’s been.
Day 10 was decent enough. I was able to park right next to the Day Lodge and get some interesting shots. Not a bluebird day…rather one of those moody, wispy fog days that turned to first rain and then snow.
Kind of like this:
And this:
Turned into this:
All the same it was around 36 degrees F and a mix of rain and snow showers. For the first hour I had the runs on Jeff Flood to myself and got four solid turns in on Kruser, Uncle Jon’s Band, Jojami and Brother Beau. A nice relaxed set of runs with photo ops.
Folks started showing up after ten o’clock. I got three more runs in on Kruser, UJB and Jojami, and by then it was ten-thirty, lines starting to form, and time to head down the Mountain to work. Nonetheless it was a nice quiet morning with moody fog wisps, fast but slushy snow, and I got to happily bomb down that last pitch into the Flood chair.
I even passed folks. Me. The slow skier. Passing people.
Granted, it was lousy conditions in some respects. Before I left the lodge I was yakking with the Ski Patrol associate hanging out to check in with folks before they headed out. We started talking about waxing our own skis (I’ve started doing my own wax, turning into ski geekess here), and opined that this would be a wax-stripping day.
Oh yeah. At one point I looked down to see about a quarter-inch of ice hanging off my inside edges. When I see that, I know that means I need a wax job at the end of the day. Instead of dropping off my skis, though, I hauled them home, wiped, cleaned and waxed last night. Winced at the level of stripping. In past seasons, I’d probably have skied one more day, then dropped them off for waxing. Instead, this evening after last night’s waxing, I spent a half hour scraping and buffing.
OMG. I am so turning into a ski geek.
I even came up with a Netwalk’s Children backstory vignette idea tonight while scraping and buffing my skis. Might even write and post it tomorrow–unlikely it’ll ever make it into the book, but it’s a nice little backstory setting mood piece.
That is, Melanie resorts to old-fashioned waxing, scraping and buffing of her skis when she wants to think about stuff. And guess what…the children she’s helped raise do that too.
Yeah. I might just do that. Tomorrow.
