March 30, 2007: The season's almost over...

I just arrived at our rental ski house for the last weekend of the season. Yep, while Loon is not scheduled to close for another couple weeks, our rent expires next Friday. It is kind of sad to realize that this really is the last time I drove here. So, I'm in the mood to look back and try to draw conclusions :-)

The main conclusion is that renting the house for the winter and paying for season tickets, both for myself and for Sophia, was the best skiing decision I ever made. Yeah, it resulted in a few brutal 100-mile drives through snow storms on Friday nights when sane people were having a beer inside. It also resulted in getting up at 7 on every weekend, waking up Sophia, doing the breakfast and heading to the lifts — whether it's a blizzard, a rain shower or the warmest winter day ever outside.

The pay-off?

Number one is 30 more days of skiing per season, and all that follows. Number two is that by the end of the season I was living in an imagined MasterCard commercial: Discovery Kids camp — $90, three-hour private lesson — $175, five-hour private lesson — $300, skiing with your 7-year old in all places where you ski without her — priceless.

The only thing is, the girl is now thinking if she can give up free skiing next year, and commit herself to running gates every weekend (for the uninitiated, that's called racing — the kind of skiing you mostly see in the Olympics). She wants the competition and she wants the speed. She also wants to be able to go anywhere on the mountain, and carving around the gates with the coaches watching her apparently doesn't qualify. Tough stuff, but she's got the whole summer to think about it.

On to the pictures I took throughout the season. (Well, unfortunately more great pictures were missed than taken.)

Pictures

Sophia

Opening weekend: first run of the season for Sophia. She's in a wedge, looking at me, goggles up and the season pass over her neck. Three weeks later she would be skiing parallel, looking [mostly] downhill, only taking her goggles off for lunch, and the [replacement] season pass securely attached to the zipper on her jacket. Another two months later she would tell me she doesn't want to ski in the camp "because all those kids who are still in wedge are going way too slow". And yet another month later she would once stop in the middle of a trail and proclaim: "Dad, I don't understand why they teach wedge to all those people. It looks gross!" Thank you, Ken! :-)

Opening weekend gondola ride:

It's not that easy to survive the long drive without falling asleep:

The gingerbread house wasn't easy to make:

...but Sophia, Alla (dKolya's wife) and I managed it:

Yes, she can occasionally sit still. Like when watching TV:

How can you fall asleep while having a snack and listening to your iPod in the backseat of a car?!

Views

From the top of the gondola in early season:

On my way from the house to the swimming pool at the end of December:

Pemigewasset River as seen from Loon's base area:

I-93 on the way to the ski house:

The view from the top of North Peak Chair:

Partying

For the Christmas and New Year's we created an autonomous economy, which of course required its own currency. I'm not sure how much time dKolya spent on it, but it looked AWESOME! And this would be the first poker game with the new currency (note the time, and never rent a ski house with non-skiers :-) ):

Check the flop. Tony must be bluffing:

This is not even staged:

...and this is:

It must be Christmas:

Tony and roulette — friends for life :-)