Yesterday we joined the Durango Mountain Club, which is a nice place to sit when you're tool tired to ski. Here's Ethel, sitting by the fireplace with an original Paul Folwell over the fireplace -

        -

Now, instead of loading up everything and taking it to the ski hill and parking and making our way to the chairlift, now we pull up Ethel's truck and the valet (with a nametag that says "Rudy Valet") parks it for us; we walk into the club and I run on the dreadmill and Ethel does whatever she does (I suspect that it'll be ellipticating and lifting, but Ethel doesn't have any sneakers here at the hill, so this morning she sat upstairs in the clubroom and logged in and worked for a while).

After working out, we go into the locker room and change, then pick up the skis from the ski valet - the boots have been on the warmer for a while, and the skis are freshly tuned. As we head upstairs (via the club elevator) to the chairlift level, we go through the clubroom and get the continental breakfast and fresh-brewed Starbucks.

Then we walk right out to the lift, ski up and ski on, and get in some runs; when we finish, we hop in the spa and let the bubbles take away the soreness while fresh snow falls on my bald spot.

...in 1993, after our first trip to Purgatory, and my first ever ski season (in addition to the nine days at Purg, I skiied about ten days in North Carolina and a couple of weekends at Snowshoe in West Virgina)  I decided that I was going to go on a trip by myself, so that I wouldn't have to wait for anybody else - I could ski all that I wanted.

I drove up to West Virginia in Ethel's Dodge Sundance hatchback, with the backseats that laid down so that I could sleep in the back in a sleeping bag and eat bagels and cream cheese out of a cooler. This is not the same as a day at Durango Mountain Club.

When I got to Snowshoe,I spent the first night in the car; everything was fine. I ate bagels and cream cheese out of the cooler. This is not the same as a day at the Durango Mountain Club.

I had a good day of skiing, and then, that night, a storm came up, and the car started rocking back and forth in the wind - it really, really started snowing hard. (for those of you playing along, this was the weekend of the Storm of the Century - and those folks in DC think that they just got some snow. Folks have no memories). I got out of the car and started looking for a hotel, but there wasn't anything available in my price range - so I spent much of the night wandering around in a blizzard, looking for lodging. My car got stuck in a snowdrift. This is not the same as a day at the Durango Mountain Club.

Eventually I saw another car that was stuck in a parking lot - I helped these guys move the car into a safe place. They asked me what I was doing out in that weather - I told 'em. They invited me to stay in their hotel room.

I spent the next three nights sleeping on the floor of a hotel room with five snowboarders, trying to read Hunt For Red October while they were watching a Beevis and Butthead marathon on MTV, and a female boarder (a "shred betty", in the parlance of the day) kept wondering why I would be reading that book - did I like the movie? Did I like Boat Movies? - and skiing during the day through stinging snow that was building up faster than they could groom it, and deeper than I could ski it.

This is not the same as a day at the Durango Mountain Club.

This morning, during breakfast, while sitting there eating my toasted bagel and looking up at the Needles Mountains from my breakfast table, I asked God to please not let me take this for granted.

        

The day really started out nice.

Got up just after 5, took some nice quiet time, got started working just after 6, got out of here around 9 and skied for an hour and a half - it was a beautiful day.

Here's Ethel, poised between Engineer Mountain on the right and That Mountain That Looks Sorta Like A Mirror Image Of Engineer Mountain, But Not Exactly, on the left:

          

It was a nice morning of skiing - we got back to the condo and got back to work.

And then - it happened.

Some folks showed up to help us get the router in our condo configured. There was a problem, since we have the SpeedStream modem, and the Linksys ATA router for the phone, and our Belkin wireless router - when we ran in a secure configuration, I couldn't get my VPN to work.

So they fixed that - got the phone to work, got the wireless protocol up, everything hunky-dory.

Except - my VPN wouldn't work.

And it still won't work. I've now tried it going through the air card, and I've even installed my VPN on another laptop to see if it would work - nothing doing.

I'm about to head down to Durango to see if it works there, at some wireless hot spot - if it does, then I'm gonna...I'm gonna...well, there's really nothing that I can do, is there? Except give up and admit that I going to have to

a) quit work, since I can't work remotely. This will mean that we'll lose the house in New River - well, since they haven't finished the pool, that's not big loss. Silas can move in with his brother or his cousins and finish school

OR

b) stop the purchase of the condo, since I can't work remotely.

I'm sure that there are other options - right now, though, I don't know what they are.

(UPDATE - thanks to a compentent useradmin at GoDaddy, I'm now back online via my VPN, so we can go ahead and buy the condo AND I can keep my job in Scottsdale. Thanks, Trudy!)

        

Today was an overcast day at Purgatory - there's supposed to be snow moving in, and it certainly looks like it:

             

That yellow speck is Ethel, heading down to the bottom of the run to walk over to the parking lot. This part of the ski hill is called Columbine - when it was named, "Columbine" still meant "mountain flower", not "seminal high-school-killing-spree".

We're going ahead with the purchase of the Love Grotto (even though my friend Damon pointed out that it might not be entirely mature, rational and self-restraining - let's face it. Damon already has a house in ski country, so maybe - just maybe - he's not acting in my best interests. As Ahnald said in "Pumping Iron" - 'Everybody is asking me for advices, but maybe I don't give them the best advices'...) - at any rate, we're getting ready to buy this place. And so far today this has involved phone calls with

* the realtor - emptying out the contents of the Owner's Closet for the previous owners

* Internet dude - this condo complex is at 9000 feet, and so we don't get regular cable or DSL internet; it has three T1 lines dedicated to internet, but our portion isn't big enough for both of us to do everything that we want to do for work (we telecommute) so he's going to come out and help us repartition it - I told him "I need more cowbell!"

* Home theater installers - we want a big screen over the fireplace, and we want surround sound, and we'd like to get wired Cat5 all over the house - no matter how fast wireless is, wired is always faster.

* Custom furniture makers - we want Murphy Desks in the living and bedrooms so that we can each keep our telecommute stuff up and out of the way when other folks rent this place to ski (I wanted a Murphy Desk over the jacuzzi, but Ethel just looked at me that way when I mentioned it. She's so mean and selfish).

Now we get more work down, after which I've got to get ready to leave for the chiropractor's office again - she worked wonders on me yesterday, and now she hands me off to Doctor Frank (that sounds sorta ominous) so he can crack my back for a while. Then Ethel and I are going to a meeting in town....

...after she gets through looking at FireplaceMantels.com, that is - see, our fireplace doesn't have a mantel. We have to have a mantel to keep the heat off of the largescreen TV (there may be some other reason, but I have no idea what it is. I'm sure that it's not to put pictures of the Ugly Baby, especially since we don't have any recent ones, not that we're bitter).

        

Here is the current situation on the dining table of the Love Grotto:

             

Ethel and I are sharing the table working, while supper is cooking on the stove.

We started working quite early this morning, and broke out at 9-10:30 to see how many runs we could get in on the front side of Purgatory, then went back to work. It was basically taking a long & early lunch, allowing us to get in a "day" of skiing while still getting in a full day at work.

As it happens, trying to ski as much as you can is a perfectly reasonable thing to do; however, trying to ski as many BUMP RUNS as you can, at an advanced age, might not be nearly so reasonable, which is why I'll be taking some time off this afternoon to go see a doctor.

I was in a field of moguls so large that each of them had their own zip code, and suddenly the world flew out from under me, I clicked out of both bindings, and my back and head hit the bump behind me so loud that I heard my neck crunching. Fortunately I was wearing a helmet - unfortunately, I wasn't wearing a neck brace.

But I might be wearing one tomorrow.

Now I've had  a pain pill AND a muscle relaxant, and I am wandering around with an inappropriate sense of well-being (my sponsor told me not to sign any condo-buying papers whilst under the influence) - it's difficult to remember what I'm doing at any given moment, so I am continually writing notes to myself or my boss (sort of like Memento, but without the tatoos).

We've got plans to get actual desks in here instead of using this table; since it's a small condo, though, we may have those desk custom-made into wall units. Then we could just fold 'em up wiith the monitors & keyboards inside, and lock 'em up when we rent the condo out. Ethel has that action item - find out who can build us a desk unit.

I have the action item of "find out who can mount a 40" LCD TV over the fireplace (assuming that that won't hurt the TV) and install surround sound". If this were Phoenix, it wouldn't be an issue. Since this is 9000' high in the Rocky Mountains, the options get a bit thin. There is no Best Buy with a Geek Squad anywhere within shouting distance.

I reckon I gotta go now - Ethel must be planning on taking me to the doctor. She's even putting on shoes. That doesn't happen every day, you know.

        

Hello from Cascade Village, near the base of Purgatory Ski Area north of Durango, CO in the San Juan Mountains.

It can't be anything but altitude sickness. After a month of sleeping and working at around 6800 feet, now we're close to 8900 in the Rocky Mountains. It can be a little overwhelming.

Ethel was a little overwhelmed by the size of the Chili Cheese loaded Bratwurst at Dante's Restaurant at Purgatory yesterday:

                                         

..but it turned out that, even though I had one too, at the end of the day I was actually very hungry again. Skiing way past the point where one should quit skiing is not the sort of thing that encourages moderation in diet and rest.

I've got a bit of a sore throat - it keeps showing up in the morning, and gradually disappearing through the day. Yesterday, after skiing just as much as I could, we went and sat in the hot tubs at the - well, I'm not sure what to call it. The Cascade Village condos are in several different buildings; at the front of the campus, there's a large lodge where the front desk, convenience store, pool, spa, saunas and hot tubs are, but I don't know the name of the building - but while typing this I decided to call it the Front Lodge - anyway, we sat in the outdoor soaker hot tubs, then went inside and I sat in the high-horsepower bubbler spa, then we came back to the room. During most of this, I was almost DIZZY with what felt like fatigue or fever. But now I realize that we got here Friday evening, so this is our third day at this elevation, so it's probably altitude sickness.

Ethel says that we're going skiing today - we've taken the day off from work - but as I sit here typing this, she's sitting at her laptop typing something, and I can't seem to get her moving towards the chairlift. I suspect that it's altitude sickness.

I'm not sure today that I am buying this condo, as I think that I've had an outbreak of mature rationality. It occurred to me that, for the price that I'm going to pay for this condo, I could get the lodging for almost a thousand nights of ski vacations. Looked at that way, it's just plumb silly.

It sure would be nice to be mature and rational. I hope that this mature rationality lasts.

But it might just be altitude sickness.

        

Yesterday morning, we finally headed back to the ski hill five days after the big storm ended.

While getting the truck loaded up, I noticed this macabre ensemble:

  

According to Ethel, she had opened the door some minutes before this, and a bunch of crows flew off of the roof on the cabin into the trees, and she saw a bunch of feathers fly, but there was no crow on the ground. When I walked out, all that was left was a head and a wing.

When we returned some hours later, the wing was gone - just a head, staring up at us.

It reminds me of some social situations that I've been in.

We did make it to the hill yesterday, and there was some powder left - however, it had been a heavy storm, and it had been five says since the snow had fallen, so the snow was HEAVY. It's been some years since I've made turns in deep powder, and when I made those turns, it was the light, fluffy Utah cold smoke.

I couldn't turn in this stuff.

Well, okay, I could turn, but it was awkward and ungainly and not much fun.

But after a run or two, I realized that I didn't really NEED to turn in this stuff - it was thick enough to slow me down without turning :) The day started looking brighter...

...until I got to the bottom, and saw that the lifts weren't running. Power had cut out.

And Ethel....was stuck on the lift.

It was only a half-hour or so before they cranked up the generators and managed to get folks off of the lift; at that time, we decided to head home rather than take any chances on getting stuck up there again.

Who knows - maybe the next time, she'd get stuck on a chair with some hungry snowboarders - and then I'd be posting pix of an Ethelhead laying in the snow....

        

It's Tuesday Morning, we're here at the Love Grotto in Pinetop, and the ski hill sitll isn't open.

Yesterday they were closed because the roads were closed - today they are closed because they've lost power.


             


I've had to readjust my attitude several times this morning - I've been a little ticked with the Sunrise staff. The Apaches there are all pleasant enough (which is a surprise, given that less than a century ago we were still fighting them ('we' the white folks, not 'we' the Cherokees, as obviously the local Indians ran us off to the East a long time ago)) but they also seem to be rather uninvolved in the running of their own ski area.

Usually when we ask 'em a question, the answer is "I don't know" - regardless of what the question is. Obstacles are rarely marked - sometimes even the trails aren't marked. They never seem to be in any hurry; when lift lines are forming, most ski areas start loading up the chairs, putting together singles and doubles and triples to get as many people up the hill as is possible. The White Mountain Apaches just smile and nod, and let folks ride up all by themselves, even if there are a hundred people waiting.

(this would be a real problem if there were any real crowds very often - fortunately, that's not the case)

They seem to have sort of a "manana" attitude - however, I'm developing an "iwanna" attitude, and right now those atttudes are in collision :)

But it does indicate that we are possibly skiing at the wrong area - when you get epic dumpage (6 to 9 feet is what they are calling it) , that is NOT when you don't want to be able to get to the ski hill. And to have it closed for five days after the storm is a good opportunity to repeat the Serenity Prayer - a lot. Out loud. Through gritted teeth. WIth veins standing out on my forehead. And my eyes bulging out.

So it makes it a little more reassuring that we are doing the right thing buying a new, improved Love Grotto - the condo at Cascade Village up at Purgatory (at 8817 feet elevation, surrounded by pines and aspens). Currently we're scheduled to close on the 8th of next month, and we'll be staying there for three days before the close (it was written into the offer).  Right now I'm negotiating to get into it a little earlier, as in "immediately", as I'd rather be there paying and skiing than here not paying and not skiing.

There were people who came up here for the weekend and got hotel rooms and sat in them - I'd already rented this cabin, so it's not as big a deal. (And I had a service commitment that kept me in the Valley, or I'd'a been more irritated than I already am :) But one does have to wonder - what goes through the management's head when they won't even update the web page to tell folks what's going on? There's no way to tell if they are even trying to open today - all the page says is "check back for updates".

Which I've been doing. A lot.

With my teeth gritted. And veins standing out on my forehead : )

        

We're up here in Pinetop, waiting for the ski hill to open.

It's not closed because of a lack of snow - it's closed because of TOO MUCH snow.

Here's the current road conditions map for Arizona:


   

See all of the red diamonds where the big black arrow is pointing? Those are road closures along highway 260 between Pinetop and Springerville, plus the road closure on highway 273 heading south from 260 to Sunrise ski area. Those highways have been closed since last week; they were expected to open today, but they didn't.

So I'm sitting here at the cabin, getting some work done. and bringing up this map every few hours to see if there have been any changes. The ski hill is reporting new snow amounts of 6-9 feet (I assume the differences are based on elevation and exposure) and I can't get to all of that powder.

I'm sure that the ski patrollers are just loving it. And, and....and I'm HAPPY for them! I really am!

(actually, just now I checked, and it looks like it may have gotten opened, but the lifts close at 4:00 PM anyway, assuming that they ever ran, which they probably did, even though the area was closed, so that the patrollers could go ahead and chomp up all of the powder ; )

Meanwhile, I did take a long lunch break, running around getting accounts moved around to pay for the Condo at Purgatory - it looks right now like we're going to be closing on Monday Feb 8th, and actually moving in three days before that (as free renters). Which means that I'll be buying two sets of season passes this year - but, doggone it, I'm 51 years old, and I'm gonna die soon. And just how many Porsches do Ethel and her next boyfriend have to buy, anyway?

(I think that that is a reasonable question)

So it LOOKS like we'll be skiing tomorrow, and the forecast says that we're getting some more snow on Wednesday and Thursday. So I'm not bitter.

No, really!

        

Okay - life is at least somewhat back to normal. By that I mean that, as we speak, I'm sitting in my chair in my home office, listening to a staff meeting ("Pretty crazy in the Loadtest arena...") and trying to catch up on some Gomez classes.

As a result of this return to normalcy, I'm going to start the 21 Day Gratitude Challenge again.

First off, I'm grateful for rain:

                 
...but maybe not this much. Too much of a good thing?

New River is, right now, actually a RIVER - and many of the people who "live in New River" are, currently, LIVING in the New River - that is, if they can swim.

The area is being evacuated - no, not us. We're up a little higher than that.

I'm struggling to be grateful here - since all of this rain is falling, that means it is snowing like crazy up in the mountains - Ethel says ten feet this week. She and her sponsor are driving up to Pinetop tomorrow so that they can ski powder on Saturday and Sunday - I have a commitment that is keeping me here through the weekend (no, there is no honorable way out of that commitment. I've already struggled with that, as well : ) but I'll get up there in time to ski on Monday, at least.

So this is the first day of the Gratitude Challenge (again). So the assignment is:

"Sign the contract and make a commitment to take note and give thanks for the next 21 days. Express why you accepted this challenge and what you hope to achieve from it."

First off - before I actually sign the contract (I'm waiting on Ethel to print it for me) I suppose that I should point out that I'm grateful that I speak English - however, since I do speak English, I'm aware of the ambiguity in the preceding paragraph - am I supposed to give thanks for the next 21 days, like it says? That's all?

Okay, here we go - "I'm grateful for the next 21 days - three whole weeks. Thanks, God!"

Since I first decided to do the Gratitude Challenge, I've skiied quite a few days with Ethel my ski buddy. I've made an offer on a Colorado ski condo (it hasn't been accepted yet) and now so much snow has dumped up in Pinetop where we have rented a ski cabin for two months that they are actually evacuating people in Forest Lakes are because there has been so much snow.

So I suppose something like that is what I was hoping for - not that neat things would happen, but that I would SEE the neat things that happen.

Right now, I'm not seeing much happiness, but that's got a lot to do with my neck being out - ouch. Levator scapula and such - not extremely painful; just painful like a constant toothache covering my upper back and neck. But it doesn't QUIT - I mean, it stops for a while. But when it starts, then it keeps going and I find out how much pain that I'm in because I'm screaming at somebody. (This is NOT one of the chapters in "How To Win Friends And Influence People").

But my neck is out because I was skiing, and that is a wonderful thing.

So - what I hope to achieve from this challenge is to (funny - my fingers automatically typed "get my neck fixed") put some effort into looking for the blossoms in the thorns, rather than finding the thorns between the blossoms - being grateful that I hurt my neck skiing, rather than being angry that my neck hurts - saying how glad I am that Kim and Lisa get to go up to ski limitless bottomless powder this weekend at Sunrise, rather than focusing on how I don't get to do that - indeed, being grateful that somebody actually asked me to come and lead a spiritual retreat, rather than on focusing on what I can't do because I'm leading that retreat (when I was laying in a pool of my own puke, drunk and friendless, in a ditch, nobody asked me to lead any spiritual retreats).

So that's why I'm doing this.

Excuse me - gotta go put the furniture in a boat. New River is still rising.

        

Silas went off to college yesterday, all by his lonesome....



                                                           

Momma cried when he went off to kindergarten...and to first grade....and off to his first day at work...and the first time that he drove solo. 

But she's through crying now : )

I hope that Silas enjoys college as much as I did; he is doing it, to some extent, the way that I did. He's starting off at Glendale Community College until he decides what he is really going to do with his life.

My eldest brother Chuck went off to the University of Alabama and stayed in a dorm and ate canned chili and grew his hair long and came home a communist Democrat, so the rest of us went to local commuter schools. So far, everybody else is still very, very conservative, and nobody can understand a word that Chuck says.

This is because he's smarter than we are - as I said, we went to the commuter schools : ) I myself, after about thirteen years at UCLA (University of Calhoun in Limestone, Alabama) finished up at the University of Alabama, Huntsville. This is actually a school that was founded on a "space grant" rather than a land grant - it's my understanding that NASA decided that they needed more engineers in North Alabama, and fewer cotton farmers. It's not a bad school.

Silas, bless his heart, has decided to at least start off with a computer science major, which does involve a lot of math. I did the same thing, after having failed algebra (or coming close) in high school. However, in college, I learned that math is the only real game for grown-ups, and that programming is just a sort of extension of mathematics. Logic is logic - boolean or algebraic.

Silas is a really bright kid - according to his mother, he's brighter than I am (this is pretty much a QED, since Silas never moved from Utah to Arizona; however, his mother married a short bald guy, so what does she know from smart?) He also has developed a work ethic, and he doesn't get into the trouble that we got into. He may, indeed, go much farther than we ever went - especially if he doesn't take the steps backwards that we took : )

BTW - if you're wondering why this blog hasn't been updated lately - it's because Ethel and I have been up at the Love Grotto. That's our little cabin rental at Pinetop. We've been skiing just about every day, except for the days that we were driving back and forth to Colorado.

And when we haven't been skiing, we've been condo shopping, so as to get me a small piece of snow country. We seem to have found one!...a little 1BR/1BA unit at Cascade Village, near the base of Purgatory (what the neophytes call "Durango Mountain Resort") at close to 9000 feet elevation.

We think that we're going to buy this little place; Ethel is working the offer letter as we speak, and having it reviewed by a Colorado lawyer.

My job has been to walk around and sing "Buy Me A Condo" by Weird Al Yankovic and trying to figure out how we're going to finish the season at Purgatory (skiing is very expensive there, unless you buy your season pass early season, which is what we'll do next year - but I don't want to miss the last two months of this year, so we may just have to take the bite on the full-price ticket. Oh, well - those dogs didn't need to eat anyway) and feeling oddly happy. I'm assuming that that is a side-effect of the lack of oxygen - isn't that what alcohol does? deprives neurons of O2?

Here are panoramics of the living room/dining/kitchen of the place in Purg:



It's fully furnished- right down to the dishes - and is already in property management, so it can be rented out when we're not there.(That's actually the biggest problem that I see with buying this condo - how, exactly, do you LEAVE it? I can just imagine Ethel dragging me, kicking and screaming, down US 550 back towards Durango, with my ankles and wrists duct-taped together).

So, if things go as currently planned, next winter Silas will be holding down the fort at home as a full-time student, and Ethel and I will be telecommuting out of the Love Grotto and getting in as many ski days as is humanly possible.

Not a bad plan.