First and Last

Hi!  This is me:

And this is what I did Sunday:

My first time skiing in about 10 years on the last day of the season. I grew up skiing. I have mentioned that before.  I have also mentioned the correlation between the number of years it has been since I have skied and the number of years that I have been married.  My sabbatical is over now.  I am hooked again.  And, whether or not he likes it- I am hooking my husband in too.  The kids won't be far behind.  With free Free FREE season's passes for next year (Carl does the mountain's website) for the whole family...there are no longer any valid excuses.

I went with my friend Camille.

She shreds! (see, I picked up some lingo when I was up there.)  Her husband Brian also came along.

He shreds too, but seems to be better at plowing through his brown glass bottled beverages carried around in his backpack.  I was giggling all day at the amount of alcohol consumption I witnessed on the mountain (not just my friends).  I guess all those people don't really care about physical coordination when they are flying down the side of the mountain at high rates of speed.  Me...I needed all the strength I could muster. A lot has changed in the 10 years that I have be out of the loop.  For one, people wear helmets now? I still haven't figured out how to look cool in mine yet.  Also, I was pretty sure that the rental guy had me mixed up with someone a foot shorter than me when he handed me skis that I was much taller than.  They are so much shorter that the ones I grew up on!  And the tickets are now attached to your ski coat by a little zip tie...no more metal hangers.  Each time I skied up to the chair at the bottom of the mountain I was scanned like an item at the grocery counter.  Freaky.

I completed the rite of passage that each new skier to the mountain must complete...I touched the bomber wing of an airplane that crashed there years ago.  It is supposed to be good snow mojo or something like that.

I also ran into a sign that my peeps back home would appreciate :)

Great view huh?  That is the Columbia River in the background.  It looks like a painted backdrop.  The weather was fairly clear. It was a great day and I am not too regretful today.  I wasn't sure that I would make it out of bed this morning, but I am surprisingly not sore!  Maybe it'll hit me tomorrow?  So, I did make it up for the first time in a long time, on the last day of the season...can't wait until next year!