ON Friday the 25th a postcard arrived in the mail offering me 4 lift tickets to Jiminy Peak for $15.00/piece. How could I NOT oblige...the chance to take 5 people skiing for less than 100. was almost too good to be true.
Thats the thing about Jiminy- its this mountain that strives for repeat business so whole heartedly that it throws offers at you (frequent skiier cards that cost 10.oo but save you 5.oo per visit, coupons on a regular basis, two for one ticket offers for the end of the season, State Days, $10.00 off for filling out a survey...the list goes on and on) The best thing about Jiminy, other than the mountain itself, is the fact that their tickets are time rated- 4 hour or 8 hour, starting when you get there- so there is actually no need to get up at the crack of dawn to get the most for your money. You can arrive at 11 and ski until 7. Enough of the advertising.

Sat morning we piled into the car after the usual three hours to find one sock ordeal... We arrived at the mountain around 10:45 and skied until 5:30 or so. Mikey, Anna, and Justin disappeared the minute we got tickets. Chris and I skied together for most of the day. He was doing pretty well too. Every so often he would go in and I would head to shred some diamonds. All in all the day was a good mix of efforts.

On the way home I made it a point to check in with Fred about the National Short Track Competition going on a the Petite Center. Claude is defending his title and was off to a horrible start. He managed to get shut out of the semi-finals in the 777 due to crud on the ice stripping the outside edge off his left blade. He was pretty devistated at first, but one by one... the old adage anything can happen in short track came true... and Claude has found himself back in the mix of things with his competition either falling or being DQ'd. So with fingers crossed...we await news. Abbey is doing well- having the skate of his life. Full results can be found on the USS web site.

Some interesting questions:
Why do people who have little or no experience skiing/boarding find themselves thinking that they can handle double blacks? I came across this group of people standing in the middle of the hill trying to decide how they could get down. Mind you they were located just under a headwall that eliminated them from view. One had obvioulsy just taken a serious fall, his skis located way up the mountain (in the middle of the trail) and he was hiking to get them in a prime line of travel, of course. I picked up the skis for him, brought them to him, but made sure that he had to get them on the side of the trail and told him to walk there it was safer... he returned to the center saying that he did not need any advice, thank you very much. Needless to say I saw him again later being loaded into a sled. I wonder what he said to his rescuers...???

Why do people come in to eat and leave garbage where ever they fell like- do they do this at home?

Why is it that sharing a lift is too much for some people? and why do those people complain about lines when they get longer than 5 seconds?
MIKEY in the AIR