More Skiing Less Working
Cristin booked the Intervale condo for almost the entire February week which is probably not ideal for work but was good for skiing. We left Saturday morning and this year I chose to take the kids climbing instead of lurking around the house getting frustrated with Cristin’s disinterest in getting on the road at a reasonable hour. We made it to North Conway in record time and bought groceries for the week and put the kids to sleep as early as possible with expectations of tiring days ahead. We skied Attitash Sunday and met up with Ellie’s buddy Weatherly and her family and the girls were compatible skiers so I left Ellie with them and skied the day with Phoebe. On Monday we went back to Attitash and Phoebe’s buddies were there and so Ellie and I spent some time with three or four other Mattapoisett families.
Tuesday we returned once again to Attitash and it snowed nearly the entire day. Ellie quit early to go slopeside swimming with Weatherly and I ended up skiing the afternoon with Phoebe who is now at the point where she will bomb the steepest and bumpiest runs at Attitash, some of which had crusty steep sections that were giving me pause. Cristin had been asking me repeatedly whether she was skiing in control and although I wasn’t sure I didn’t see any reason to hold her back. More on that in a bit. Wednesday was the day I was looking forward to, sunny with a foot of new powder but the kids were smoked and the wind was gusting to 50 mph so we decided to instead take the day off. I took them to the new Living Shores aquarium, owned by the parent company that now owns Story Land.
It had just opened a few months prior and is relatively small and overpriced but is well done and staffed by knowledgeable people that press you for questions. We watched a bluegill sunfish protect a future nest of rocks for almost 15 minutes. We then visited the small aviary they have and then went to view the asian river otter exhibit where a staffer told us all about them. The aquarium also has a few touch tanks which I will admit I am not that excited about but are a staple of the modern aquarium. After this I took the girls to Subway and then shopping downtown, trying to give Cristin a chance to do some real work. We then swapped roles and she took them to see Sonic the Hedgehog and have dinner with Cristina and Cora. Thursday was scheduled to be a bit less breezy but with temps in the teens so we headed to King Pine which faces south and was protected. I keep thinking the girls are going to be bored by King Pine but it remains a fav. They both love the glades and the little jumps that pepper the trails and this year we spent nearly half the time in the terrain park which is somewhat tame by modern terrain park standards which makes it accessible to the kids, and myself as well. We grabbed dinner with the Kings and got the kids to bed so we could pack.
Friday we went to Cranmore for a morning ski before a planned afternoon return. At first Phoebe, and I’ll admit I as well, were a bit frustrated by the relative boring over-groomed slopes of Cranmore but we started exploring the terrain parks and then found decent glade skiing on the north side of the mountain. At that point Ellie peeled off from our threesome and Phoebe and I were using the singles line to try to get as many runs in as possible. She wanted to go back to the terrain parks to show me she could handle one of the rails so we went back to the south side terrain park where we headed down and Phoebe surprised me by skiing across a very serious rail feature. At some point she skidded out and her whole body went off the rail sideways and she fell a significant vertical distance onto her hip on hard packed snow and was extremely distressed. We were in the landing zone so I had to recruit a parent to waive off the boarders at the top while I shuffled her to the side of the trail and managed to convince her to try and ski down under her own power. It was a hard fall, probably as hard as any fall I have taken skiing so I am fully expecting a serious bruise. I hope that this doesn’t make her shy about pushing herself but it was probably also a lesson for me to try and keep things within reason. We had our traditional DQ lunch and Blizzards and made it home in under 4 hours. It was a fun trip, perhaps a bit hard on the work productivity, but it was good to have some sequestered family time that is centered around exercise and being outdoors. We are hoping to get one more weekend up north in before the spring melt.
