Tales from a Female Ski Bum

I have been a very bad girl.
I have fallen into the abyss.
I have gone skiing.
Everyday.

And I have forgotten about the rest of the world.
It happens.
Every winter.
Where I forget about absolutely everything except where and when I am going to make that next turn. I fall asleep debating whether or not to skin for Dawn Patrol or stand in line waiting desperately for first cabin. Dinner is eaten early so I can be in bed by at least 10pm - if not wicked earlier - so I get enough sleep to ski. Nights at home consist of making dinner and then trying not to fall asleep on the couch before bedtime.

I eat. I ski. I work. I eat one more time. And then I sleep.
All the mundane things of life slip away, consciously at first and then i just plain forget. Only a timer on my phone reminds me that the mortgage is due or that I have to pay the electric bill. The grocery store seems so far away, and Neil Diamonds at the Phat Italian are just soooo much closer. We eat spaghetti, mac & chees…

Sure, you've heard plenty of guys in the liftline ask the liftie the question.
Perhaps you've seen the parantheses surrounding the number at the end of a facebook status. You must have heard it late night in the bar, surrounded my high fives and shots.
When we were little, my mom would write our first initial on the calendar.
I liked when there were lots of M's.
The local at the bar pulls his glasses to the brim of his nose and looks at his watch. He looks to the sky and does some calculations in his head and comes out with an answer that will probably astound you.






These are the day counters.
This number can be seen as badge of honor.
A way of measuring one's true dedication to the sport.
The larger the number, the greater they glory.
Every day like another notch in the belt of the season.
Tagged This One.
Skied that One.
Self-Proclaimed members of this group greet each other
with handshakes of acknowledgement.
They celebrate in varying degrees as differen…

As I sit down to write this week's blog, there are still a few stubborn leaves blocking the view of Killington Peak from my kitchen table. I can see what has become a familiar site to those of us living here over the past few weeks: the perfectly clear blue sky just beginning to warm up the ground and the snowy smoke rising from certain trails which are now having their turn as the focus of our wonderful snowmaking team's attention.
There's a new feeling around town
...a new spirit...
and it is not the same one that rises from the depths of post-foliage every year.

This is a new spirit, a lighter, happier one.
More like an old-new spirit, because I have felt it here before.
When I was a child, when I was little and felt that the mountain was young, like me.

And it is a pervasive spirit, one that seems to be growing larger and has effected almost everyone I have stood in line, packed a gondola or ridden a chairlift with in the past week.

Snowboarders & Skie…

"In winter, it's easy to give up on everything,everything I've planned, everything I've accomplished,everything I believe. In the face of the first snowflake, I see the face of God, and in those who follow lesser but infinite gods, bringing MUNDANE EXISTENCE to a freezing halt, and I feel convincingly that I've arrived in exactly the place at exactly the time I was meant to be...."
For weeks now, we have been living this mundane existence. Each day we wake up, go to work, maybe have a few drinks and ice cream with friends, celebrate a birthday or two...the same types of days that I would imagine a resident of the real world experiences. Money gets wicked tight and life becomes focused on merely moving from one day to the next. The Ski Bum Life seems like only a dream, a faint reality sometime hopefully in the future...

And then it happens.
The snowguns are turned on, the lifts begin to move...

Opening Day Finally Arrives!!!!
my life has purpose again, it ha…

The hardest weeks of the year will soon be safely behind us.
We have been waiting
- some could even argue patiently -
for this season of torture to be over. We started this past week with a torturously tiny flurry.
An amount of snow so freakin' tiny that Vespi didn't try to eat or roll in.
But after months of snowless depressions
(excluding that awesome week in October)
I was more than a little over excited for even just a dinkiness of fresh white wonderfulness. In fact, on Friday I was late for work.
Why?
I had decided to myself that there was snow underneath that damn K Cloud and I wasn't going to stop hiking until I found the snow.
Which didn't happen until I was almost at the top of Snowdon,
a good bit passed the beginning of the cloud.

You would think that one would use up a "late for work" day over two feet of powder. Not me.
It was less than a half inch.

at least the mountain was stunningly beautiful in all her frosty glory. Something that was creepy was discov…

Snow.
It was here not too long ago.
Like last week.
And now it's gone.
Just like that.
Talk about messing with a ski bum's brain waves and mental stability. I was all set to get my season started, getting stoked about adding more trails to the one proud Rime. But now, we are reduced to walking through fallen leaves as they completely cover the bike trails and litter the ski ones.

I was all set to ski...
and now I really just don't know what to do with myself.
It's nobody's fault.
There really isn't anything you can do about the weather turning from a frosty wonderfulness back to the warm days of Autumn. It'll be fantstic weather for the Halloween Parade tonight in Rutland.
I am fighting it, this warm weather.
Each day I start off with a silent protest, picking a wool hat from the hat drawer but it has to come off by around 10am because I am sweating to death.
Of course, it hasn't helped my mood any that my body crashed as the snow me…