Anyone out there?......

Who loves to ski? I remember a couple of years back, taking a powder rule day from work; intended to drive to 7 springs for sum powpow, easy 1.5 hour drive.......well i got to thinking along the way that this would sure be a nice day to ski tline but thats another 2 hours drive each way and i gotta be home tonite and i told mrs jimmy i was going to 7 springs and she'd prolly be pissed that i went to tline but when i got to the interchange the car just automatically headed to tline .......anyways, drove thru a blizzard of blowing snow, took more like four hours to get there but it was epic, ungroomed freshies. I love to ski!!!

What are some of the crazy things you've done because you love to ski?

I am moving to UT because---I love to ski!!!

good topic. the most recent thing that comes to mind is ditching work at spur of the moment. Most of my trips this year were spur of the moment based on weather droppings. So I was up at Tline for the weekend in the beggining of march and it was dumping all weekend like usual. I hated to have to go back to work on monday! Sitting at work, all i could think about was the prime conditions I was missing. monday afternoon about 4pm i saw that more freshies were headed for the valley in the next day or so. At about 5pm i told my co-workers I needed to take the next couple days off for personal reasons and apologized for the short notice. 6pm booked 2 nights @ cv lodge for $35/night. blined it home, grabbed some food, (gear still in car from weekend) and rolled to the valley! tuesday was a great bluebird day, but tuesday night the new dump began, and wednesday was the best pow day ive had in the valley.

i like to talk about skiing, but god i LOVE to ski!

... dumb-a$$ lol ! Hey I leave around the 15th of July and will be in Maui June 25- July 3 but yeah if you get here ..... let's hang. Have you figured out where you are gonna live? Need any furniture or house-stuff?!?!?!? I have been selling lots of my things.

JimmyZ - ok once I was sick with the flu and had a temperature of 101 and I still skied at Liberty b/c damnit it was a ski day. Orrrrr once I ripped my right contact lens on a ski day as i was driving up ... took the thing out and tossed it out the car window and still skied bumps with no depth of perception.

oh gee well i remember driving up to blue knob for a race ... the spark coil wire to the distributor on my crap 4x4 fell of going up and my team mates left me to get better starting positions ... then my starter motor died (thank god for a manual trans for rolling starts). I got fastest time of the day and then it started snowing so much ... about 1 foot/hour it took me 8 hours to drive back to dc after spinning my 4x4 out on I-70 and going backwards into a ditch.


hmmm maybe a good tale was when I totally lied at work and left at lunchtime to go skiing at Libery. The last week, heavy snow all around and after wailing Utra at the bottom I hit wet stuff, got bucked off my skis goin' fast and broke my other colar-bone ... gee that was tough explaining the next day at work. Funny thing was just before I left for skiing we had an AFLAC guy come in and try to sign me up for insurance ... including broken bones -- damn could have gotten 3 grand for this one ...


... or on the flip-side, @ seven springs after a day of skiing i hooked up dancing with this crazy-chick, left my skis out locked to the rack all night and the next morning they were totally made off with and missing in action. so to ski i dropped $600 for some replacement Kastle slalom skis from Willie's so I could ski the next day.

hmmmm chicks and skiing -- probably my downfall.

In order from sorta to very crazy:

10. Spent a winter weekend with four stinky relatives in tiny vintage Scotty trailer on top of Blue Knob in late '60s with broken window and no heat. Went back and did it again.
9. Have driven 4 hours each way for day-ski trips, numerous times over the years. A practice I still haven't totally quit despite recent high gas prices.
8. Wrote all kinds of goofy trip reports for DCSki out of vanity, but also crazy desire to share love of skiing with others.
7. Drove family of six to Vermont and back for 2 or 3 days of skiing. Dumb enough to have done this repeatedly.
6. Me and two buddies got lost once in a Catskills snow squall at 1am looking for little motel near Ski Windham in 1985. Check engine light flashing and gas gauge reading empty when we finally pulled into motel lot.
5. Left Rutland, VT one morning in Feb 1979 when thermometer at local bank read minus 37. Dressed like The Mummy Meets the Michelin Man and skied all day at Killington.
4. This crazy ski stuff is hereditary. In 1995 my dad was 75 and his arthritis was so bad he couldn't bend over anymore to buckle his boots. So I buckled them for him and my kids got the privilege of skiing with Grandpa at Massanutten.
3. One frigid Xmas break during my college track team years in the 70s I ran 6 miles every morning and evening while in between skiing all day at Blue Knob. Did this every day for 2+ weeks.
2. Four years ago drove rambunctious family of six to Colorado and back for 5 days of skiing. Highway time probably exceeded slope time. One child actually proclaimed drive through Kansas as her highlight of trip!?!
1. Passed serious test of marriage vows by driving all around Aspen one day in March 1991 to successfully locate a breast pump to relieve mammary gland torture inflicted on wife after I talked her into leaving an infant back in Virginia with mother-in-law for the week.

Ok, JimK wins all awards. Aspen breast pumps, total LOL.

I have no tortures, only joys. I now think that 6 to 7 hour round trips are a normal part of a ski day. Pushed my son to join a particular scout troop so we can go to tline every year. Strapped on skis and worked 1" of cover for a half a day at pipestem state park - one of the most fun days of my life. My 10 yr. old daughter did the same. Skied my front yard on a 0.5" "snowfall". Spent a whole winter driving 2 hours on Friday nights with my Dad to ski a 200' hill covered in ice (my skis bungee corded to the top of his 1977 Accord). Slept in car in parking lots many times, pee bottle close by. Avoided mandatory ski patrol frost bite checks on a -10F night in Boone. Every mountain I see develops imaginary slope systems. Currently jonesing for some XC gear that I will use once per year. Enjoy tuning. Read ski message boards all summer. I even bought skis from a the roof rack of a total stranger I met online. Good times, good times.

thats not crazy, thats a clear testament to the old saying we love to hear, "skiing is something you can do for the rest of your life"

Gee, Jimmy. Your car has the same memory control as mine...I don't have to drive it cuz it knows the way to the snow by itself. I guess it's the uncontrollable excitement I get every time I see the pieces come together for a big powpow day in the Apps. I mean, it's like I can't get on the road quick enough. I call Ms Monica at work and tell her to get her self home asap so we can go... I buy the winter beer at a quick stop rather than at a grocery store...I don't even worry about packing my bag...whatever is left in it from the previous trip will do...I'm out the door and into the car and driving as fast as conditions permit...I get up at 6:30 AM and go to find patrol to see if they need some help taking sleds, bamboo, etc... up the hill so I can get first tracks... It's the same kind of feeling I used to get on Christmas morning waiting to open presents only it repeats itself again and again. I love to ski in the fresh pow, in the fresh pow in the trees, in the fresh pow in the bumps, in the fresh pow whereever I can find it. I don't know if you thought of it, but, I was looking at the hill behind the house at Bonner and, if there was an ample dump... I mean you can ski all the way down to Rt 32 and do some car serviced skiing I'm gonna scope out a few lines this summer cuz I think it could be really good. I love to ski.

I bought a condo for prolly way to much jack. Now I'm without a job figuring how much I've got to make at the next one to keep it. Only decision so far on cutting back on budget has been 'The condo ain't going!'

Clay

hey man, in all seriousness.. ill be more than happy to help with the payments for the small price of floor space anytime im up there

I used to ski down my front yard in southern Maryland when it snowed... in the rain.

Shredded a pair of skis in Patuxent River State Park one year trying to "ski the glades".

Shredded a pair of skis at Blue Knob State Park one year trying to "ski the glades."

Made a ski run in the woods behind my house in Crownsville. No damage involved to the skis though. It did involve a half mile of "cross-country skiing" through two feet of snow caked with an inch or more of ice. My chins have never burned so much.

Got myself involved in a project at work largely because it entailed some winter "business trips" to New Mexico (yes, I worked though, so it wasn't a COMPLETE boondoggle).

Come to think of it, I did that more than once in Seattle, too.

Spent a long weekend with JohnL. That counts, doesn't it? Actually, I skied a no-fall zone on that trip just to hit some relatively fresh tracks. JohnL was there to witness it. He was yelling from the bottom of the run (along with my other friend Brian) to bail. I held on for two more turns and was ready to take two more after that but I decided to listen to him, just in case. Maybe he was right that I should have gotten out of there when I did, but I still think I could have gotten two more turns in without going over the cliff. Someday I'll prove him wrong or die trying (maybe literally)!

I ditched a girlfriend once to get first turns in the morning. And it wasn't even a powder morning. That could explain why she dumped me after the ski trip. Maybe she should have used some more feminine persuasions to convince me to ski with her instead of just crying about how I didn't love her, blah blah blah, something like... oh wait this is a PG website, sorry.

I also found a potential backcountry run at a state park just north of Kansas City. Natural gas line that just got bushwhacked (let's here it for the pipeline companies for creating all sorts of backcountry opportunities! ). If we ever get a eight inches or more of snow, I'm all over it.

So nothing particularly big. BUT... I don't love skiing enough to try to the local hill. Well, since they just replaced their largest ski slope with a snow tubing park, maybe I should say... I love skiing too much to give any money to the local hill.

In reality, almost nothing I do for the sake of skiing is normal anymore. I should have known I was entering a new zone of insanity all those times I drive through blinding snowstorms with friends back in college in New England. That was the beginning of it all.

Nowadays, it can be tough balancing a love for skiing with work/home/family commitments, but it would be a lot easier if I could ditch the job. All I can say is "watch out" if I ever hit the lottery.

My measure of insanity this season is the 6000 miles I put on a new car between mid January and late March, almost all from skiing. In the 2 months since the season ended for me, I have only added another 700 miles or so. That car pretty much went from "new" to "trusty old ski-wagon" in about a minute.

I was at Killington in similar circumstances. Early January 1982 (The week after the "Ice Bowl" AFC Championship game in Cincinnati) Most of the thermometers read -20 to -30 all day and the wind was brutal. Every morning we skied down the frozen access road to access Great Eastern. Got stuck on a broken chair for about 30 minutes with a 30-40 mph wind in our faces. When we dragged ourselves into the lodge, I had to dunk my head in warm water to get the wool hat/mask off that had frozen to my face, hair and beard.



Crazy? I think not. March 8, 2007, just days after his 78th birthday, my Dad (who has Parkinson's) and Mom joined me and my daughter (who was on spring break) for a wonderful bluebird day at 7 Springs. I usually buckle his boots and follow after him to help him up on the rare occaision that he falls. Everytime we got to the bottom of the North Face area, he would exclaim "Yeah! I think I could do one more"

Funny, I find that quote works for both skiing AND drinking.

Seriously, though, hearing these stories about y'alls dads is inspirational. Gives me hope for a long ski life ahead. Also, it's just great to hear about people loving life all the way through it. Yee haw!!!