One last post for the year – Christmas was nice & quiet as I imagined it would be up at Sunshine. It was calm & warm & clear (it got a little overcast in the afternoon) – I left my down jacket in the car & didn’t even regret it. Early(ish) morning the parking lot was relatively empty & all the lifties were in good spirits wishing people a Merry Christmas & some even were dancing as you came to the top of Strawberry. There were a few costumes on the slopes as well – Santa, of course; a Yeti; and some guy that looked like he had a lynx skin on his head. There still wasn’t a lot of snow, but I had a good time & got a lot of runs in; Alex joined me briefly between some of his jobs.
It was still pretty warm on Sunday, but I was exhausted from all the skiing the previous day (I don’t think I’ve ever had a Christmas that was so active, for once the Energy In to Energy Out ratio must have been above unity). So a good day for lazing around ploughing (damn this continent – I don’t know how to spell anymore; I thought it should be plough, but the spellchecker says plow & now I am confused) through my book – I’ve almost finished the epic. It’s been an interesting walk through England’s (more particularly, Salisbury’s) notable events from prehistory onwards – & it’s always nice to finish a 1000+ page book, there’s been a few this year. I digress, we (Steve, Alex & I) did make it out to the Nordic Center that night for a quick lap around under the lights – once again it wasn’t really cold.
We finally got some decent snow yesterday & the mercury has dropped a good twenty degrees Celsius – so hopefully the skiing will be better in the New Year. Another good sign that it’s a little nippy is when you go to unplug your car, you can’t coil up the extension lead as it has lost all of its pliability – despite having had a standard current running through it all day. Have a great 2011 – I hope you’re as excited about it as I am (on that note, I’m trying to work out what to buy first for the roadtrip – a GPS for riding, a SPOT personal tracker or a GoPro helmet cam – the SPOT is the cheapest & available locally, so it might be that).