Thursday, March 01, 2007

Lake Placid

So I had a few days off midweek and decided that it would be a good time for me to go skiing. So rather than take the easy route and go somewhere within 60 miles of my apartment I decide to go four hours away to Lake Placid and ski there. It was absolutely beautiful weather and a gorgeous view and worth every extra minute in the car.
There were a few hiccups in the trip that only slightly marred the whole experience. I left at about 0500 so I could get to the hill in good time to get my rental skis (yes! I had to rent!!!) and get out on the slopes. Well....an hour into my trip I realize my wallet is sitting in another bag at home NOT the one sitting in the passengers seat next to me. SO I had to turn around, search my car thoroughly for toll fares and pick up my wallet. This put me behind in my time schedule quite a bit so I left again and decided to ski on Thursday instead. No problem.
On Thursday I rented performance skis (a set of Rossignols parabolic skis) that experience is a post in itself!! Needless to say the skis were shorter and the experience trying at first. By the end of the day I was much more comfortable on the skis but they were not easy to get used to after straight cut skis.
As I said I had a lot of fun and skied a LOT. You see when you ski alone the number of runs you ski in a given time is a lot higher than the number you ski when in a group.
The interesting part of the day was at about 9:30am. I was riding up the gondola for the second time and hitched a ride with three other "singles" (its bad enough I am single now they put me in a seperate line). As we pull away from the boarding area rider #1 (a ski bum in his late 30's) reaches into his backpack and pulls out a bottle of beer. He proceeds to open the bottle and take nice long swigs. He looks at me and says "Good morning" and instantly the gondola is filled with the beer breath. Sitting next to Rider #1 was Rider #2. Rider #2 pulls out a large can of PBR and opens up HIS can of beer and proceeds to take big swigs. Now we have the smell of Canadian beer and PBR filling up the small gondola. Lucky for me Rider #3 did not have any beer with him and didn't share with his friend Rider#2. (In case you were wondering #2 and 3# were early thirties snowboard bums) What made the ride especially interesting (aside from smelling beer all the way up the mountain at 9:30am) was the fact that the snowboarders proceeded to have a discussion about pie crusts. At first I thought this might be some strange "boarder" lingo I had never heard before but I was wrong. The men were comparing the pie crusts of two different food establishments in the area. "Well he uses egg in his crust and so and so uses more of a _____ base" Things like that. To look at the guys you would never think they knew so much about pie crusts.
It was good to have some "adventure" of sorts and hang out away from Syracuse. Still havin' fun! Oh by the way when my beer drinking gondola got to the top I notd 5 other bottles of beer in the ski bums backpack.

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