Ski Bunnies

I arrived home friday afternoon to find Cristin in the midst of a patent crisis that threatened to postpone a long awaited road trip. Luckily things were resolved at the zero hour and we were able to set off with five or six bags full of gear.  I was determined to eat dinner on the road and we made it almost 12 miles before we pulled off to eat at Red Robin. I was able to complete a week of not eating meat with their veggie burger which was very good if only because it was sauced to the max.  Also the pickles.  We grabbed coffee at the Target Starbucks where I watch the barista walk into the shop in a target t-shirt which she stripped off, uncovering her starbucks shirt and proceeded to read some kind of chart for Cristin’s drink  – iced vanilla skinny something something.  The ladies were allowed to watch their car TVs so we had a pretty quiet ride to Concord with only one pit stop.  We arrived around 10:30 so there was no time for acclimation.

 It was one of those residence inns so the ladies had the bedroom and they crashed out which gave Cristin time to work and me time to align my spine to fit that random bar that gives all the designers at the pull-out-couch manufacturers the giggles. Everybody slept in and a long breakfast and an hour long ride to the ski hill featuring me pointing out the mountain scenery while the ladies ignored me and quarreled over a “Frozen” book got us to Ragged just before the crack of noon.  We hustled everybody into the rental room to get everybody outfitted.  We made our way from ticketing to sizing to boots to skis and by the time we got to helmets, Ellie had made it clear that she was not in fact interested in skiing and Cristin then took her back upstream to deposit all these items.

I took Phoebe out to the slopes where they had a really nice beginner area.  Uncle John had suggested getting them used to stuff before lessons and unfortunately I ended up having too much fun with her and she got a bit attached to me being her teacher.  This was double unfortunate because my instruction mostly involved me bent over holding a 40+ lb dynamic object for 90 minutes or so which I am sensing at the moment may have been a bit easier 20 years ago. Although, 20 years ago I would have also been wearing skis that were 40cm longer.  Phoebe did pretty well and I did spend some walking backwards holding her which forced her to actually support her weight.

After two runs on the tiny hill serviced by a magic carpet she declared she was ready for the chairlift and I didn’t argue. I waited to watch how people get toddlers who can’t ski on and off and discovered that there is no finesse, you just muscle them.  We made a few runs down the hill and I did my best to try to explain what we were doing and to get her to cross her tips and put weight on the downhill leg and all that but the fact is that I am not trained to do this and she was just enjoying her father skiing down the hill hunched over and supporting 92% of her body weight.  I was in the moment too and got her in the lodge without enough time to get ready for the lesson which was probably doomed at that point anyway. After snacks we went back out for a few more runs and returned the gear and met Ellie and Cristin to go snow tubing.  I was informed by one of the Ragged employees that there is significant competition among the resorts regarding these tubing parks and I was very surprised by the fairly extreme nature of the hill.  The first thing I noticed was that the run ended in a significant uphill section which I felt was strange because I was used to sledding where you just dissipate your speed in some flat section at the bottom.  I then noticed people fumbling with large blue squares.  These turned out to be very large pillows filled with liquid that they were using to stop people so that they didn’t run through the safety net.  On our first run, Phoebe and I went right through our pillow and into the embankment while the group next to us had reached the net. This prompted a change a policy and they shut down half the lanes so they could double the number of crash pillows in the open lanes.  
We made three more runs as did Ellie and Cristin and called it a day and headed home to go swimming in the pool.  The pool was warm and saline and very pleasant and didn’t have any bits of partially digested hot dog in it until about 15 minutes after our arrival.  Luckily Cristin has a sixth sense for Ellie’s tender tummy and she managed to not only capture and contain the vomit at one side of the pool, she did it in such a manner that the other bathers hardly noticed.  Phoebe and I continued swimming and headed back for dinner which Cristin had called in from one of the area restaurants.   Despite the obvious fatigue, we had a difficulty at bedtime getting them to calm down and stop jumping on the bed (thanks Gaga!). I finally got on the bed and shut off the light and bored them to sleep with stories about my skiing days. A solid day.