So, along with my most recent computer woes, I figured I'd write about the ski trip. With the exception of the computer going out, it was a good trip. Great, to be more precise.

Picked up the girls at school, early, on Wednesday. Due to a snow day, they were doing "late release" for a week. I'd planned getting to the airport around Atlanta traffic and leaving at 4PM was simply not on.

Peripheral note: President's Day Weekend the girls' school system schedules a four day weekend, Thursday-Sunday. Thus they weren't supposed to miss any school. The change got made after I'd made reservations.

Thus we got to the airport fairly early, got checked in, checked our bags, got through security smoothly (nearly record time for Atlanta), were in the closest concourse. All good.

Got to our gate, got established, opened up the computer to do some busy-work and...it (from my POV) shut down. Nothing worked. Screen didn't come up (turned out it was the culprit) etc.

Oh, well. I went over and had a smoke while the girls read their respective books. We finally boarded (on time). The girls and I had both gotten something to eat (they know the drill at this point.) Took off on time. And I racked out.

I don't usually sleep on planes, I'm not a good flyer, but I'd been awake for more than 24hours at that point so it was a no brainer. I slept about 2/3s of the flight. Coach so it was "do the head bob" but not bad.

Got into Salt Lake, found our car, had a minor snafu when I mistook my car keys for the rental but when I noticed the ones I was trying to start the rental with were a Nissan instead of a Ford, all became clear.

Okay, I was still a bit sleep deprived.
:-)

Headed to the condo. I anticipated problems there given the lateness of our arrival, but there weren't any. The "condo" was more of a hotel and had a 24hour mannned front desk and car valet. All good.

The condo only had one bedroom so I gave the girls that bed and slept on a fold-out. Uncomfortable but I got to sleep.

Got up the next morning, found breakfast places and rental shops. A short digression to describe.

Park City Ski Resort is at the base of a narrow side valley of the main valley the town rests in. Only about a third of the resort can be seen from the base area; the rest is over a ridge to the right as you look up. If you want to use maps to follow this story, they're available online.

There are several condo buildings actually in the resort, a Marriott, a second I didn't quite catch the name of and "The Lodge At The Mountain Village" which was where we were staying. The Lodge is part of a complex of buildings surrounding a small square where there's an ice skating rink. Upstairs are the condos, the bottom fronting the square is lined with shops. The snow starts at one corner of the square. Uphill (up stairs) there are more shops and squares, eating establishments and what have you.

Our condo actually overlooked the square and the parking lot that connected to it. The only way it could have been closer to the skiing was if it was one of the places further up the hill. But the parking and access outward were better than those. Really, it was a great place and surprisingly reasonable in price. (I have a good ski-travel agent.)

I picked up lift tickets while I was walking around getting a feel for the place. The only thing left to do was get the kids fed, get gear and hit the slopes. So I got the girls up and moving and we accomplished all of that.

Since we'd had problems with overexertion leading to altitude sickness on the Colorado trip, I was planning on taking it easy. One reason to pick Park City was that it's summit height was the same as the BASE we'd skied at in Colorado. I hoped that the lower altitude would prevent a reoccurence but I was being careful. We also pumped water and I picked up a Camelbak to help with that.

But the rule was we were staying on the easy, lower, green slopes for the first day. We headed over to the "bunny" slope, which was unremarkably named "first time", got on its lift (named, you guessed it, "First Time") and got to the top.

Jenny: Daddy, this "bunny" slope is bigger than most of the regular slopes in North Carolina!

It was. It was the biggest damned training slope I've ever seen. It also had some easily accessed side slopes that were decent green runs and a back way over to the main lift (Payday) that led further up the mountain.

We stayed in that area most of the day but late in the day we hit the Payday lift and went up to do the long green called Homerun. Mostly gentle it had some interesting switchbacks. And it was, I thought, pretty long. It certainly put me down by the end of the day.

The girls wanted to do one more run so I parked at an "apres ski" place and waited for them to come back. I'd told them to go to the ski valet hut, which I could see, and leave their stuff there.

When it was getting on for time (we had a dinner engagement that evening) I called Jenny on her cell phone. She answered in a sleepy voice.

Me: Where are you?

J: At the hotel. We're in the lobby. We were going to the room.

Daddy: I thought I told yo... Nevermind. Okay, I'm going to do one more run. I'll meet you in the room.

So Daddy went off to be the last guy on the slopes that night.
:-)

I got back to the room and they were watching TV. We were planning on meeting Howard Tayler (Schlock Mercenary) and his wife that evening for dinner. So we waited until Howard and his wife showed up. The usual snafus about finding any new place but we linked up and headed out.

We'd planned on Italian since Jenny had brand new braces (put on the day before we left.) But given parking, we just went into the first place that looked good, which was an upscale steak house similar to Ruth Chris. When we sat down and opened the menu, I sensed a bit of unease.

Me: Sandra, I remember being very admiring of you when I read Howard's blog. Especially the stuff about how you managed to run the household on such a shoestring when he left Novell.

Howard: Those were tough times. Things are getting better, but not like when I was with Novell.

Me: I'm not like that. I have a horrible time with money. When I've got it, I spend it. And this is my treat. So, when you look at the menu, imagine Howard's still with Novell and he's on expense account with an important client. In other words: Ignore the right side of the page (I put my hand over the prices.)

Sandra grinned at that and accepted my offer.
:-)

The steaks were excellent and, perhaps because they have several kids of their own, Howard and Sandra were easy about including the girls in the conversation. Often when I go out with people, the girls end up being pretty bored but I think they had a good time. It was a fun evening with Howard talking about some of the things he's planning with the Schlock Books (I'm glad to hear that he's planning on releasing his early stuff in dead tree) and chatting of "cabbages and kings." Howard and Sandra are good people and I look forward to seeing them the next time we go to Salt Lake. And since we talked a bit of business, I can now take most of it off on my taxes.

:-)

The girls and I were still exhausted, though, so we left pretty much as soon as we were done with dinner.

Alas, I could not get to sleep. Don't know why, I was whacked. But I was up until after 1AM. I eventually drifted off.

I awoke to the wind howling. I didn't want to get up but I finally managed to crawl to the window and look out. The flags on the square were pointed straight out. I was afraid it was a Chinook, which could melt the snow like a laser torch, but it turned out it was a cold wind. Snow started to fall and it was horizontal. At first it was light but then picked up until you could barely see the base of the mountains.

Our second day skiing had been, apparently, devoured in a blizzard.

I went out for breakfast as I had the day before, letting the girls sleep in, and asked around. It was "supposed to clear up" later in the afternoon. Our lift tickets were good until 7:30PM and they had excellent night skiing areas so I went back and discussed it with the girls. They'd both woken up and looked at the conditions and were in agreement that it was too much to ski in. But we got our gear on, dressing very heavy because it was colder than the day before, and went out to get breakfast.

When we were done with breakfast, the wind wasn't quite so bad. We decided we could do the First Time slope survivably. But by the time we got out on the slopes... the wind had dropped, the snow had mostly stopped and the clouds were breaking up.

We looked around, changed plans and headed up the mountain.

As I mentioned, most of the slopes were on the back side of the ridge. Following a rather baroque route (Payday to Bonanza Access then the Bonanza lift to the summit) we ended up at the summit where the wind was still pretty darned strong. But the skis had cleared and all we had to deal with was blowing (hard) snow. Actually, it was cool as hell.

We skied that side (Home Run to Claim Jumper then up the Silverlode lift to the summit and repeat) pretty much the whole day. Since it was still friday crowds were low. Had a hell of a good time.

I could tell I was getting tired as hell, though, so we headed back down about three. Home Run stretched all the way to the top, about a three mile run, and I wanted to be able to make it all the way to the bottom.

Made it down and the girls wanted to keep going. So I let them. I scheduled a massage instead.
:-)

Sideline anecdote: I stayed down by the slopes for a bit, though, smoking a cigar. There was a standard family of four, one each, occupying the other end of the table. Actually, only three of them, two young boys and the mother. The dad was apparently off handling "end of skiing day" stuff. The mother was dealing with one of the boys, probably about seven. The younger, probably five or so, had his head down on the table. Full gear, still, including helmet. Head down. I hadn't paid much attention to him at first but at one point I looked at the mom and grinned.

"I think he's done for the day."

"I know," she said, smiling. "He's pretty tired."

The dad came back and I was talking with somebody else. But then I had to chuckle. The dad had picked the kid up and the kid was as limp as if he was dead. Just asleep, mind you, but I mean totally out of it. His arms and legs hung straight down. Dead weight.

One of the ladies I was talking with laughed about it to the mom.

"YOu know he'll be up at eight, raring to go," she said.

"Oh, he will," I interjected. "But give him some food and I bet he passes out in fifteen minutes."

"Probably," the mom said as she left.

Skiing even wears out the young. What the hell am I doing?

Anyway...

I found the girls when they got back. They'd skipped the ski valet again. Sigh. I hauled their skis up to the room and went back for my massage.

The first professional massage I ever had was last summer in Arizona. Since then I've had a couple more. Writing, especially in the less-than-ergonomic conditions under which I write, really screws up my back and shoulders.

I ended up being worked on by the manager since the regular masseuse was late. Kara, however, was fantastic. She put a new level on what I consider a good massage. Painful as hell, but excellent. I kept joking about how she needed to move to NYC and become a professional dominatrix. Also a mention of having been worked over by "The Mormon Interrogation Squad." "Ve heff ways of making you convert!" But she found some spots that I'd thought were, for example, shoulder damage that turned out to be muscular. Truly excellent. And did I mention painful? Oh. My. God. "Breathe" she'd say. "It helps if you breathe." "Well,yes," I'd squeek. "I'm trying not to scream, though."

When I got back to the room, between the massage and the skiing, I was so fragged I coudln't even consider dinner. Jenny ended up handling most of it (we ordered pizza.) That night I slept like a log.

The next day, Greg Donahue was supposed to go skiing with us. We slept in, got breakfast and waited for him to show. The temperature had really climbed and was supposed to get higher. People were streaming in (it being Saturday) and they were all bundled up for cold weather. I could tell they were nuts. I especially felt bad for the little kids going off for "ski babysitting". One kid I saw looked like the younger brother in A Christmas Story. He was going to sweat off half his body weight.

Greg finally found the place after mistakingly going to Deer Valley (which was, fortunately, nearby.) He came up to the room, was introduced, and some brief discussion of clothing for the day ensued. We all ended up in ski bibs, jackets without liners and not much else. Just underwear underneath. And even those were too much at times.

We went to the far side of the mountain again, since that was normally less crowded. The sky was as clear as a bell, the wind had dropped to nothing and I swear you could see five hundred miles. With the exception of it being too hot, it was an awesome day to ski and as soon as we got off the lift to the top we started, hitting Home Run to head to Claimjumper.

Greg had once been a black diamond skier but with age and having a life he'd gotten out of it for long enough he was more of a blue run guy. And easy blues at that. His brother had been his major ski partner and always wanted to do the really tough stuff. Greg, when he saw Home Run, was like a kid at Christmas.

"This is what I really like," Greg said, heading down the long, wide, open slope. "The hell with black diamonds! My brother's always saying 'Take a Midol.' But this is what I want!"

We skied down Claimjumper and got to the Sivlerlode lift but it was packed. I looked at a map while Greg and the girls got some food. There was another lift, King Con, that went up a hill by the same name. Most of the runs were blues but there was one green path that led back to Claimjumper. But to get to King Con we'd have to ski a short section of blue. (Broadway) I talked to an instructor that was with another group and he said it was an easy run.

We tried that after the break and it was. The "blue" was more of a green, probably marked that way to keep the unwary from going to King Con then bitching that there weren't any greens off of it. (There was one, but if they were too stupid to figure out not to go up King Con they'd be too stupid to see it on the map.)

That was pretty much what we did the rest of the day, skied down to King Con, took that up the hill, cut over to Claimjumper then ski all the way back down again.

Lindy had regained her Olympic class ski-plow technique and Greg thought that was funny as hell. "I don't know how she can ski as fast as I'm going with my skis straight when she's in a snow-plow!"

She also was talking shit since Jenny and I were both going slower. So I pulled out my MP3 player, put in some appropriate tunes and hunkered down.

It's a funny thing. When I have the right music in my ears, I can scream skiing. Partially, it takes my mind away from the fact that if I fall it's going to be werrrry unpleasant. Partially, it helps with my rhythm.

Whatever the case, I can scream when I've got the right music. As long as "it's got a beat and you can dance to it."
:-)

Al Stewart? Not so good. Sadly enough, I must admit that the best tune, and the sad admission is that it's ON my MP3 player, is "Brickhouse."

:-)

"Oh she's a brick...house.
She's mighty mighty, just lettin' it all hang out.
Oh she's a brick...house..."
:-)

OTOH, Winterborn and Seraphs worked pretty good, too.
:-)

So I kicked Lindy's ass down Broadway (the blue/green run down to the lift). Meanwhile, Jenny had taken a spill so we had to wait. She was okay, though.

That pretty much set the day. I took a couple of breaks and let Greg and the girls do a turn while I waited. I just didn't have the muscles to keep up. I have to stop every few hundred yards to let my thighs stop screaming. At one point I laughed and pointed to my legs while we were waiting for the King Con lift: they were shaking like I had St. Vitus' Dance.

It was good that Greg came along so the girls could get more skiing in is the moral of that story.

Temperature note: Despite dressing down, we were overdressed. With the exception of the lifts, I could have done most of the day in a pair of shorts and a windbreaker. Certainly wind-pants and a wind-breaker. It got up to FIFTY by the late afternoon. The snow was still holding since it was deeply packed, but it was HOT at times. Very weird.

We ended up the day skiing down Home Run to the base. It had cooled in places and iced in places by then but it was a good run.

We were done for the trip so we turned in our gear (Greg had used the same ski shop) and headed upstairs in our bare feet. When we got back to the room we changed clothes and my ski pants were literally dripping with sweat. Very odd ski day but excellent. I got lots of pictures.

We headed out afterwards to a "family" Italian place in town. We just took the shuttle bus and stopped at the first place that smelled good. The food was okay, but the girls wanted to order shakes and we got shakes all around. The food as I mentioned was okay. The shakes were AWESOME. I ended up drinking mine then finishing up everyone else's. I could have drunk four by myself. Really really good.

Did I mention the shakes were good?

The previous couple of nights I'd hit the bed and the girls had gone to their room to watch TV. This night we all ended up out in the livingroom watching cartoons. The girls and I had discovered "Teen Titans" almost the first weekend that I had them after the separation. And that night, we found them again. We had a great time watching TV together, it's a bonding thing for us, but it got even better when Toonami came on.

Not because we're huge anime fans. Quite the opposite. We tried to watch them straight but when it got to a show about, of all things, junior high school level TENNIS, I just couldn't handle it anymore and went full Mystery Science Three Thousand.

The critical juncture was when the "hero" (okay, exactly how heroic is playing tennis?) went to the school doctor to get his eye checked. Why he'd gotten an EYE injury while playing tennis is just too stupid for words. But what got me howling was when the doctor said, I am not joking:

"Are you sure you got this injury playing tennis?"

I started howling and the girls looked at me in confusion.

"Yes, I'm sure doctor," I said, mim icking the anime way of speaking. "I mean, I was there. Trust me. I saw it happen. It is, after all, my EYE! I mean, how could i miss it? It hit me in the fucking EYE you ignorant asshole! YES, IT WAS TENNIS. WHAT DO YOU THINK I WAS DOING!?"

That set the tone for the rest of the evening, with Daddy, with occasional input from Jenny and Lindy, lampooning the anime characters. At times we were laughing so hard we could barely breathe.

It's the simple things in life. Anime about tennis and chess. Treating it with the respect it deserves...

The next day was "fly back." The girls hadn't packed (the MST3K session went, I admit, late) so I chivvied them on that. We headed to the airport early, though.

Digression: Jenny and Lindy's school system is, as I've mentioned, academically excellent. And they focus on the fifth (Lindy's) grade. Hard. Some of the best teachers in k-12 are in fifth.

Her teacher had asked her to get some pictures of erosive processes. Well, we'd been busy and, frankly, most of the erosion in the ski area was man-induced from cuttings. So we hadn't gotten any good pics.

So I was a very good Daddy. Despite the fact that the girls know I rush it to the airport, when we were almost there we turned around and went back to the mountains. I found a canyon with a road and we got some shots. Didn't take long and it was major Daddy points.

We still got to the airport in time if there had been normal security lines. As it turned out, Salt Lake, at least that day, had some of the most underused TSA people in the nation. Three security stations and NONE of them had more than two people at them. There was a line that DIDN'T HAVE ANYONE ON IT. I was so shocked I almost took a picture.

I think they'd had major movement earlier in the day and were just waiting for the next shift to change to a smaller crew. But when you compare walking up, getting your stuff out and the guy in front of you already being DONE before you're ready to go through to, say, McCarren with it's sometimes FOUR HOUR lines for security...

I'll take Salt Lake any day.

So we were early for the plane. But that was all good. Jenny had run out of reading material on the way out and I'd forgotten to bring any. So we stopped by the airport bookstore and picked up books for each of us.

I got two of Bernard Cornwell's new ones, Lords of the North and... the prequel whose name I forget. (NOt The Last Kingdom, the one after that. I still don't have The Last Kingdom.) They're about Albert's England and have the usual Cornwell character of a "work his way up from the bottom, I can never get a break no matter how many of the boss' enemies I kill character. With Vikings. Great great great stuff.

(I said to Miriam "I understand why Cornwell keeps knocking his character back but I wish from time to time he'd just give the guy a fucking break." Her response was to loudly cough " Mike O'Neal! (cough, cough) Prince Roger!"

"Hey!" I said. "Roger made Emperor! I'll cop to Mike O'Neal...":-)

Now, as I've mentioned in other dispatches, I don't care to fly. I used to simply hate it from a "this is very high" perspective. Despite jumping out of planes, I have acraphobia (fear of heights.) But ever since a bad cave dive, that is much superceded by claustrophobia. I have an urgent desire to step outside for a breath of fresh air. On the signing tour I'd find myself thinking longingly of free-fall and how much better it would be than being in this damned tube.

This was going to be a long flight, I wasn't particularly tired so I wasn't going to be sleeping. I knew I was going to be freaking out and I was out of tranquilizers. Those are bad flights for me.

Not with a Cornwell in my hand. I was actively disappointed when the plane started to descend. I was only two thirds of the way through the book!

For anyone looking for something to kill time between John Ringo books, I can recommend most of the Richard Sharpe series (certainly the earlier ones) and the Last Kingdom series. Cornwell's one hell of a writer. Don't know about the quality of his history, don't care (Pogo. :-) He's one hell of a writer.

The image should be fixed in your mind. It is in mine. Afternoon flight. Middle three seats. Two pre-teen girls and their dad. All three bent over their respective books more or less for the entire flight. Lights on, head slightly cocked. Forget the inflight movie (I think Lindy caught part of that) we had books.

When we were waiting for baggage (and I was catching a smoke) there was a lady who had been on the same flight doing the same thing. She commented on it and thought it was great. So did I.

That's pretty much it. Got back, picked up the car, drove the girls home, drove home and wondered what I was going to do about my computer.

That saga is in the other posting.

Yes, Nic, please send this to the website.

Take care, all,

John