Now that we're got a place up here at 9000 feet, it was time to bring Maia the Malamutt up into the snow.

                

For the first two days here, Maia oscillated between ecstatic jumping around and laying down and breathing - it takes a while to get used to this elevation.  But, after a few days Ethel decided that it was time to take Maia snowshoeing (well, we'd wear the snowshoes - Maia doesn't really need them, although she did do a bit of postholing).

This is one happy dog : ) This is what she was born for - bounding around in deep snow. True, she was also built for pulling heavy things through deep snow - but let's not remind her about that, as the only "heavy thing" that she might be pulling through deep snow these days would be Pucketts, and we'd rather pull ourselves along, thankyouverymuch.

Maia will go out in front of the condo and just lay down in the snow, maximizing the contact between her minimally-fur-coated belly area and the frozen ground.  This leaves me wondering if Malamutes are actually native to this planet, or if the immigrated from Pluto. If so, then they were the dominant life form on that planet, because This. Is. One. Smart. Dog. (except for her choice of family, that is - if she had known that we were going to leave Park City for Phoenix, then she would never had nuzzled up to me that day in the Salt Lake animal shelter; but, then, had I known that I was going to leave PC for Arizona, I wouldn't have).

Silas is coming up on Friday - next week is GCC's Spring Break - so we should have a condo full of Pucketts for a while. I'm not sure that this place is big enough for that many folks - so if it gets too crowded, I'll just send Silas out to walk Maia. Silas takes ten or twelve walks a day anyway - at this elevation, it'll take a lot longer to walk anywhere at all.

It's taking me a long time to do my runs - this week, I'm "supposed" to be back up to 40 miles/week, and I'm on track for that, but I am very tired. Last night, I was tired in my dreams - when I woke up this morning, I was still tired. 40 miles at 9000 feet, plus a few days of lifting, and skiing every day (today was day 37 out of a planned 50) is not easy to do when you're 51 years old.

Come to think of it, it wasn't easy to do when I was 45 years old, living in PC, and that was at 7000 feet elevation (the difference between oxygen levels at 7000 feet and at 9000 feet is much sharper than the difference between sea level and 2000 feet - in the same way that the difference between "bad" and "worse" is much sharper than the difference between "good" and "better" (reference? anyone? Bueller? Bueller?)

Speaking of that last reference - Hey Silas! When you come up on Friday, please bring "Have Space Suit, Will Travel"; you've read it, and so has your mother, but I haven't gotten to reread it yet. Oh, and bring up the boxed set of Warren Miller DVDs, too, please. Oh, and a couple of bags of the Starbucks coffee in the pantry. Oh, and bring the mail - real mail, not Albertson's flyers. And the new voltmeter, too - I need to change out these thermostats.