Saturday, February 9, 2008

2/9/2008 The orange badge of courage

Who would've ever dreamed that I would have a ski ticket on my
jacket?! The guy at the cash register thought it was hysterical when
he handed me the piece of wire and the sticker and I looked at him
and said, "What do I do with these?" He went ahead and assembled the
whole thing for me. I could do it on my own next time, but for the
first time, it's pretty daunting, especially if you've never really
seen a fully assembled one before.

2/9/2008 Cross Country Skiing!

My first time to cross country ski. MRM invited me and very patiently
taught me and coached me. We did "The Airport" first (an old landing
strip, so you know it's nice and flat and straight . . . great for a
first timer like me). Then a little "terrain". I definitely prefer
having the tracks to keep me on "the straight and narrow". But
"downhill" was pretty fun! I learned to herringbone and when we got
to a bigger hill and herringbone wasn't working for me, I resorted to
that really old fashioned way where you turn your skis perpendicular
to the direction you're moving and go "sideways" up the hill. In the
middle of doing that I had this amazing flashback to when I was about
5 and my parents took my sister and I skiing on the slopes at Santa
Fe, New Mexico. We lived in Santa Fe way back then. I was barely old
enough to remember it. I think the only skiing we did that day was
from the ski rental shop to the lodge where the hot chocolate was.
But it was uphill from the ski rental shop, so we did that
perpendicular climb the whole way. LOL! I hadn't thought of that in a
bazillion years. Today's climb was much easier than that one and the
whole experience was really fun. And I didn't fall down!

[Photo note: Warm hat and great mittens courtesy of Greg back in Texas who loaned me all kinds of warm winter attire from his days at Xavier University in Cincinnati and other cold places he lived before moving to Texas.]

2/8/2008 The shoveling out of the car

I'm going to go to Boston today as soon as I finish teaching my last
class. Of course, I have to be able to get into my car first and then
be able to get my car out of its cozy little snow bed. It took about
an hour and 20 minutes for this amateur snow shoveler to free the
car. Fortunately, I had just done it last Saturday, so this is only a
week's worth of snow. This is only about a foot of snow. If I hadn't
have done it Saturday, there would've been 18" or more and I think I
would've just left my car to be buried and waited for the end of mud
season to find my car again.