First day of ski school

God, I've been slacking on the posting! Didn't even finish out the year with the Blog 365 thing. Made it on number of posts, but the end was lacking in umph.

Anyhow, to attempt to get back in the swing, here's a description of the first day of ski lessons. No photos, 'cause I'm a freaking moron and forgot the camera. And was too lazy to try to take any with the phone. So, whatever.

Got up way too early (now that I'm not really working "way too early" is 6:30, an hour after I used to get up for work...), loaded the car, ate, got the girl up (boy isn't doing lessons this year and I agreed to give him the week off), then our carpool mates arrived and we piled in to the Subaru and headed east.

On the off chance that you've been ignoring the news of the great North West, we've had a winter and a half so far: Big snow in the lowlands, followed by big rain and melt everywhere. Snoqualmie pass was closed for three days this week because of avalanches, flooding, and other natural disasters, but today was open and the ski area was running full steam. We got to the parking lot at around 9, parked in the Carpool lot (closer to the walkway to the area, which is a good thing...as was the free bags of granola for being nice carpool people), put on the ski boots and headed up the hill.

Peter, the dad of the two kids along with us, took Kyle (a friend of Logan's who is taking lessons for the first time) and June (a friend of Maya's who was along for the ride and to play in the snow) off to the ski school chalet to get Kyle set up with gear while Maya and I headed for the Holiday chair. As you might recall from my post recapping my birthday, the last time Maya had skiied wasn't the best. Today was much better.

First off, the boots fit. Second off, we took Holiday, the "easy" chair, and she didn't panic when we got off. In fact, she made several great turns, and we probably could have fit in another run before lessons but I didn't want to be late. So instead we skiied over to the Webbski chalet to line up and wait for her class. Or, rather, to find out which class she was in, then hike up the hill 25 yards or so and ski back down a couple times.

Once she was hooked up with her class I headed off to ski. The snow was OK, there were some rough patches that had iced up and run off, but the grooming machines had done a pretty good job. I did one run on the "Central Express" high-speed quad chair, then headed over to Silver Fir to try out the new quad chair on that run (they replaced an old slow triple with a new high-speed quad). It ruled. I think I skiied that side 6 or 7 times, and the longest I waited in line was 3 minutes. Most of the time it was ski up, get on the chair, ride up. Much better than the old chair, although my legs did appreciate the 10-minute ride before...

The other two things that made the day good were the weather - early in the week they'd forecast rain, but instead it snowed the whole time - and the Sansa. I hadn't skied with music in a couple years, and it was very nice to have something I could easily turn down when I got on the chair, and that I could easily read if I wanted to change songs. Not that I did that too much...the random shuffle only came up with a couple songs I didn't feel like listening to.

Eventually it was time to head back to Webbski to pick up Maya. She'd had a great lesson - entirely on the Magic Carpet, but that was good 'cause she felt more comfortable - and had made a new friend (whose name I forget). Kyle had also had a good lesson, and June had enjoyed playing in the snow, but everyone was ready to head back home. So home we came, with a brief stop at Burger King for lunch. Because really, after a morning of skiing everyone needs a Whopper™.