Oy!

So the weekend started off great...big show last night, our next-to-last gig with Jack Chicken, the Sacred Truths' final show, plenty of rock and quite a bit of roll. Then everything went to hell.

So the boy is back in ski lessons with the fine folks at Webbski, on the same Saturday morning schedule as in past years. Which on a normal Saturday would mean I get up at 7, drag the boy out of bed at 7:30 or 7:45, then go meet Dave and Kelsey at the Preston Park & Ride at 8:30 or so and head up the hill.

Well, since I knew the show would run until 1, and since Paige was going to the show as well and we'd therefore need some child care, we imposed on Mom to host the kids over night. Mom lives in south Bellevue, right off I-90, and is therefore at least 20 minutes closer to Snoqualmie. So it was all going to work out great, right? Well, not quite.

Got to Mom's at about 1:20, was probably asleep by 1:45, and set the alarm for 7:45 figuring I'd leave the house at 8:15 or 8:30. That part of the plan (the waking up part) worked fine. But I'd forgotten the small problem of waking up young Logan Chicken. The boy just loves to sleep, especially at around 8 AM. So we didn't get out of the house until about 8:45 or 8:50, well behind schedule.

The rain turned to snow right around the second chain-up area, but the roads were still clear. Crowded, but clear. The snow got heavier as we climbed the pass, but we were still making good time. Both the Summit and Summit East exits were packed, so we drove past to Hayak and looped back to the Silver Fir parking lot, pulling in around 9:30. So...30 minutes to get gear on, ride the chair, and ski down to the Webbski chalet. Not going to happen.

And it didn't. We got the gear on relatively quickly, and there wasn't a line for the chair, but Silver Fir is slooooow. And on the way down Logan hit a spot where his confidence left him, so he had to hoof it down a bit. But we finally made it to Webbski (probably around 10:25), and luckily his teacher had planned to do a quick run and swing back with the class to pick up stragglers. So off he went, and off Dave and I went to ski on our own.

Now last season I was in shape. I'd run the Portland Marathon in early October of 2006, I ran the Seattle half marathon in November, so even though I slacked off after that I was still in good shape come January 2007. Well, that's not the case this year. Prior runs this year had been with Logan, so it was ski....stop. Ski....stop. Skiing with Dave, on the other hand, was ski....ski...ski some more...stop at the lift. And let me tell you, that hurt. A lot. Like "end of the day I've been on the skis for 8 hours and it's the last run" hurt. Only this was the first. Ouch.

Fortunately for me, Dave was in the same boat (or he's just humoring me...one of those). And also fortunately for me, we skied Silver Fir pretty much all morning, and it's a slow chair so it gave me a nice break. And even more fortunately, we left after Logan's lesson at 12:30 so I didn't have to suck it up any more.

Oh, and it was snowing all morning so I got soaked. Not cold, just wet.

OK, so that's the ski review. Well, the day just got worse thanks to the Seahawks' inability to run the freaking football. I should have turned off the radio and not turned on the TV after I got to Mom's, 'cause at that point they were up 14 - 0 and looking good. Then the Packers remembered how to play and we forgot, and that was the end of it. So now I find myself in a position of either rooting for the team that just beat us (since I can't stand the Giants or the Cowboys), or rooting for the Patriots just so they can make history. Or maybe I should go back upstairs and start rooting for Jacksonville...