A couple weeks ago a bunch of us went skiing. A few months ago Lisa and I had bid on a condo package at Snowshoe Mountain here in WV at the March of Dimes Chefs Auction. The condo accommodates 6-8 but I think we had 11 of us stuffed in there. The floorplan had a second floor loft bedroom with a double bed and a set of bunk beds. Lisa, Shannon, Emily, and I slept up there. The first floor had a bedroom in the back and Dad and Patty slept back there. The Joe, his girlfriend, Chris, Justin, and his fiancee' Jules slept in the common area. The quarters were pretty tight for sleeping but overall they were still pretty nice.

Joe, his girlfriend, Justin and I didn't spend much time in the condo as we tried to get a lot of skiing in. Dad and Chris didn't show up until late Friday night (we had arrived Wednesday night). Jules tried to have Justin teach her to snowboard but that didn't work out too well so she ended up taking lessons which was much more successful. Joe really didn't know much about snowboarding when he started on Thursday but he got substantially better over the four days we were out. Dad is, sadly, out of shape (or old) and couldn't ski too much on Saturday or Sunday. Chris, it turns out, doesn't really know how to ski as well I was led to believe and he almost killed himself when I took the crew of people who claimed they could ski to a black diamond run called "Cup". Cup is one of my favorite runs and I held off on going to it until I knew Joe could handle it. Sadly, however, neither Chris or Dad told me Chris couldn't ski (well, he can ski he just can't turn or stop). Cup is a pretty easy black diamond but the surface was very icy and he just barreled down the mountain scaring the shit out of me. He eventually crashed (when he had to turn) and left his skis and poles way behind. He slid across the slope and crashed into the woods. Fortunately he was OK. A little shaken and sore but luckily alive and unharmed. I helped guide him down the rest of the mountain and then we left Cup behind for safer pastures. I went back to Cup alone on Sunday and Joe and his girlfriend also went there a bit.

On Friday Shannon took some ski lessons and then on Saturday I took her out on "Cub" run. Cub is a pretty short green (easy) slope. However, on that day it felt incredibly long. I skied backwards and watched her. She would slide about ten feet and start to pick up speed and then start chanting "Oh My Goodness! Oh My Goodness" before catching up with me and holding on for dear life. She had a blast. My knees and feet however were taking a pounding from the way I was digging in to keep my speed down. We did one run down the hill and by then my body was so sore we headed back to the cabin for lunch. Then, on Sunday I took her back out. This time we went to the same hill she had taken her lessons on and instead of skiing in front of her I skied beside her and let her hold the handle of my ski pole while I held the other end to help control her speed. We did about 10 runs and had a blast. She gained more confidence on each run and she loved going up the chair lift. On the first run she was holding the pole with a death grip but by the fifth or sixth run she was barely holding it at all. It was awesome to see her improve and enjoy it so much. That morning was my favorite part of the trip. My knees were still really sore by lunch time but nothing like they had been when we went to "Cub" run (Cub is much longer than the hill we went on on Sunday).

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