Brrr

We have been experiencing cold weather this week.

Some of you might think it gets cold when the water in the dog bowl freezes. We have past that standard and gone further in the direction of cold this week. One morning, I looked at the thermometer which shows the outside temperature, and I thought, "How nice, 95" I missed the decimal between the 9 and the 5.

I try to walk the dog closer to midday when the thermometer moves toward freezing. The layered look is in these days. Our street is a sheet of solid ice, but there are streets in the neighborhood where the truck with the deicer spray has made it safe for walkers. Shadow loves the smell, taste and feel of the stuff on the street. She wants to roll in it when she can, but I do my best to prevent her. She still remembers her life without a fenced yard, and prefers to do her business on the end of the leash, rather than inside her own yard. We take lots of walks.

The kids are still busy skiing, but I do not have any new pictures today. It was too cold to take my camera out of the pocket this weekend. Maybe I will have more next week. Happy Winter.

More fun skiing

This is where I want to learn to ski. Watch out for the snow snakes though.The kids line up by these animals, I am guessing they do it by height.I do not want to teach the group on the end, though.What I saw when I first arrived at Picnic Point. They said the view was delightful. I begged to differ. Then I cleaned my lens and took another couple of pictures.
They have difficulty rating the trails. On the map, they are green circles (easy) out on the trail, they are blue squares (not so easy). Then there is Huckleberry. Sometimes it is blue and sometimes it is the dreaded black diamond.Then there is the unrated cat track. The downhill skiers think it is easy. I would give it a double black diamond at the end, but I survived.

Can you say "snow day?"

If you can repeat the above phrase, you are ahead of the local school district. Despite 5 to 7 inches of new fluffy white stuff that appeared overnight, magically all over the ground, they insisted that the kids show up as usual. Every district around our fair town was at least on a delayed schedule, if not off for the day. That meant we shoveled out the driveway so my daughter could hop in the car and make it somewhere. She survived just fine, although at least one student stopped in the driveway up to the parking lot for an unreasonable amount of time. All this in a city and county that plows once a year, whether we need it or not. That was last month.

My son made off to the bus stop just fine. His stop is #5 on the route, and the bus was 15 minutes late. The 4 stops before his are in our immediate neighborhood. That bus was wearing chains for the first time all year. At least we go to a district that values education, although according to the report I heard, about half the student population at the high school never made it in. I can imagine a lot of parents did not want their little darlings driving today, or they got stuck on the way in. I offered to drive, but she was sure she could handle it, so I let her. It is not far and mostly level roads. She knows how to handle the hill now.

How I get my exercise. . .

Some people go to the finer ski resorts to ski. Silly them. I go to watch my kids ski. There is far more exercise involved. Those lazy skiers just ride the chair to the top of the hill and glide down. The watchers hike up and down the hill in all kinds of weather, all day. This smart one brought snowshoes. I brought hiking boots. Next time, I think I will take my poles too, they help on the way down.This place sure has a big lodge. They wanted $10 to park my little car in their snow too. I guess someone has to pay the mortgage. Sometimes the view is more rewarding than others. Sometimes I clean my lens before I take pictures. The lake of hanging ears is out there somewhere. That would Pend Oreille to those of you who speak French.Sometimes the snow blowing in my face is colder than others. Then it stops snowing and we can see the courses. I case you are confused, there are two courses here, one for boys and one for girls. Each skier only does half of the gates. I would hike up to just above the third pole from the bottom of this picture.
My boy had a great first run. He fell on his second run, but he got right up. Unfortunately the loss of a ski ended the run for him. He was not hurt, but he needed Mom, which is the other reason why we hike up the hill to watch the race. He can hear me cheer him on as he flies by, or he can have a hug if he is not flying. He took a few extra rides on the high speed quad chair after the races, so it was a fun day in the end after all.

Race day

All the fog was gone, so we could see the racers and the gates on New Year's Eve. There were too many pictures, so I made them into a video. Watch for the moving black dot on the course. That would be a skier. I was glad the sun was out, because I was holding a stopwatch at the finish line. The pictures are courtesy of my spouse, who froze his fingers to take them. Maybe if my brother made the film, there would be music. I did not feel so inspired, so you just get to watch. Turning up the sound will not help.

Happy New Year to all, and to all a good night.