Hello from the land of sun and powder. Work has been slow lately, but please do not ask me if it is because of the economy. We do not know. I was not this slow last year, but last year I was the only inspector, and even three inspections a day took a big chunk out of every day. Now, to share those three makes a day rather slow. But we need the help through the busy times. The nature of the job. Feast and famine.

But it has meant that I have some spare time on my hands, even though spare time spent snowboarding is never much appreciated. I don't know why. If one spends a slow day in the office, unable to charge for one's time because nothing got done, one's husband is not nearly as upset as if one spent the day snowboarding, even though the pay's the same- zip.

Wendell came up for a few days this weekend, and I took one day, after my work was done, to snowboard with him. We tore up Keystone until the front side was tracked up, then drove to the Basin. We rode Pallavicini again and again to the top, then down the double blacks it accesses. The pictures in this post are all at the Basin.

Welcome to the land of snowflakes the size of cinnabuns, burning shins, and 30 minute meals. Did you watch the video of BBD and me up at Vail Pass last Tuesday? Or did you, like some, not see that little arrow at the bottom of the picture and thought it was a snapshot? Not that it matters, we're not doing anything so spectacular. When we're hucking off cliffs, I'll let you know. Or maybe I won't, since so many of my faithful few blog-readers do not appreciate the fact that we would consider a sport with the potential for injury.

Since the day on Vail Pass, we made a flying trip to Kansas for Bobby's Uncle Jerry's funeral. Funerals are always... well. One is there to say goodbye, to honor a life, all the good and bad that went into living it and shaped the person, to mourn the fact that the goodbye is for such a long time. But at the same time, the whole family is together, and everyone, with their new appreciation for life, is there to confirm for each other that we now remember what is truly important- us, the living. It is so good to be able to spend time together, joy mixed with tears. We hated to have to say goodbye to Jerry. I have known him for six years, and I am so glad I got six years in this family to get to know him, even though the last few of those years he has been battling ALS. For those of you who don't know this, we bought our jeep from them when he lost the muscle control to be able to navigate the manual transmission. We love you, Aunt Linda, and the rest of the Collinses.

Every time we go back to Kansas lately, it is for some emotionally-charged event. Reunions, weddings and funerals. And every time, the land itself plays so much into the event that when remembered, we also remember the wind, the blowing dust, the brown sky and bending grass. I remember that, now- the sense of place one always had there. Here on top of the continental divide, one is filled with awe inspired by ones beautiful surroundings, by the discovery that it is ok to play, even as adults, to release ones inner child and simply do things for the thrill of it. But I have not felt that sense of... oh goodness, it's hard to describe. Being numbed into exhausted silence simply from being buffetted by the wind. Wind like a blast furnace, drying and burning, that force that pushes incessantly until one swears, if one has to withstand one more gust, one will scream. And one more gust comes, and another, and another... a shared water jug, ice rattling, on the floorboard of an ancient farm truck, the taste of wheat kernals, chewed and chewed until the gluten is developed and it becomes rubbery like chewing gum, the rustle of corn leaves, the utter silence when the wind stops, patterns of wind in grass, silvery paths over bending heads of wheat, grasshoppers hitting legs, arms, faces. Do you feel it yet? Always, that love/hate feeling for the land, in spite of what one is loving or hating otherwise. One remembers events by the weather. Our wedding day, blowing dirt and a tornado sighting by Tribune. Hot, so hot. Shivering, damp wind cutting through our dark clothes at Grandmas funeral. Funerals are remembered not by the church services, but by the graveyard interment ceremonies, how hot, how windy, how cold. How desolate the horizon looks, past the huddle of mourners, and how small and insignificant we are, how that, in the space between here and the horizon, things will go on unchanged by this cataclysmic event we are so involved in. Our lives, the joys and sorrows, won't make a bit of difference between here and that empty horizon. The words, the songs are lost in the wind, carried away, gone before they even reach the edge of the group of people. The emotions one feels in Kansas are made more so by the fickle weather, the desolate land, the small, lost-looking main streets. (Now, understand, I am speaking of Western Kansas. Central and Eastern Kansas are entirely different experiences.)

And the people. It is one thing to go back to Marienthal, where we know everyone or at least of everyone, and so do not look at them through the eyes of strangers. But in Sharon Springs, the farmers in their seed caps, in their saggy Levis and cotton shirts, engraved belts and dusty boots take on a mythical quality, an "oh... I've already seen this movie" feeling. I am as curious about them, now, as I was about the dreadlocked snowboard culture when I first moved to Summit County. And I haven't even been gone that long. It is amazing how adaptable we humans are to changing cultures. Or maybe it's just me, accused as I stand of being chameleon, too eager for change, with little regard to constants. Oh, it has caused a few debates with my nearest and dearests. And after this time away, when people ask if I would move back, I reply that I do not know. I love it as fiercely as I hate it.

(later) I write best in the mornings. The creative juices are fresh, the sugar from my morning apple is hitting my brain, I am procrastinating going to work. The former half of this post was written yesterday morning. By now I have waxed less... whatever that was.

By late afternoon, when I am finished working, my brain is sluggish but my body wants activity. That is when I try to get outside and do something- cross country skiing has been the activity of choice lately. It is hard work, especially for me with my super skinny, light skis picked up on the cheap from a local consignment store. Everyone else has aggressive fishscales and metal edges. Not me. Mine are nordic-center only, although I have yet to take them on the groomed trails of a nordic center. They shoot out behind me on icy hills, and the round plastic edges do not hold on those same downhills I drop into on my bike in the summer, in the web of trails we now live on the edge of. I can not imagin not living by trails anymore. How did we do it? Oh, one is always a short drive from a trailhead here, but I am one of the lucky few who can walk out my front door, click into my skis, ski down to the trailhead, make a thigh-burning loop, pop out above my house, and ski right back to my front door without ever crossing my own tracks. The other night, I got home about dark, skied up to the front steps, climbed the steps with my skis on, then walked into the house still wearing them (i was trying to be funny, imitating Harry in Dumb and Dumber. I try so shamelessly to make my husband laugh at times it is tragic. His giggles are hard to come by in the winter sometimes.)

Anyway, he did shower me with a condescending smile, may have even humored me with a laugh, which was all I was asking for anyway, then told me to "quit screwing around before someone gets hurt". I sat down on the couch, released the bindings, and propped my skis on end... and one of them slipped out of my grasp. It fell straight across his shin, his feet propped as they were on the coffee table, and instantly the humor fled the situation. He sported a bruise on his shin for a while thereafter. I don't know why, certainly not because I hurt him but probably because my plan backfired so royally, I still giggle when I think of it. He, of course, was instantly livid, but he couldn't be for long because I was so penitant.

The last full moon we had one really warm night, so I set out on my skis about dusk, headlamp in my backpack. The memory of it remains one of the more beautiful places inside my head. As dusk turned dark, the light just never went away, only became more silvery. Even in the forests, shafts of light illuminated the trails. Mountains ten miles away stood with each craggy face lit in silver relief, golden town glowing at their base, my shadow only gray, not black, beside me. I never used my headlamp. When I got home, I was still a bit transformed by it, and dissapointed by the fact that once home there was nothing to do but go inside, where the lights were too bright. I begged and begged, and finally got Bobby dragged outside and we climbed to the ridge above the house and stood watching the gold and silver valley until we began to shiver and followed the trail, hard-packed into two feet of snow, back down to the house.

Wendell is sleeping in our spare room at the moment, and I am wondering if I should wake him because he had considered snowboarding today, and with only five arrivals, four of them back-to-backs that are still occupied by last nights guests, I will have some time on my hands. Freda's Incubator (A.K.A. the baby park, the wussie park, the little park) has some really good jump lines right now, and I want to hit them. They are just big enough to get the thrill of some air miles (ok, feet) without descending to a landing from twenty feet in the air. I am such a baby in the park lately. "ohh, I dont wanna get hurt! Ahh, I'm afraid! Noo, I can't hit that! Waa, I'm not good enough!" Never mind that I have hit the full-sized features in the past, nailed some, biffed some, and lived to tell. Now, rails terrify me, tabletops intimidate me, boxes worry me, and I cant get up to the lip on the half pipe before I chicken out and bail. And now I even have a helmet! I hit all the features three years ago with a bare head. I don't know why i'm such a baby these days. Even the bump lines and the tree runs are feeling a bit shifty under me this year. Part of it is my longer, heavier board, so stable on the crud, but not as light and responsive under me when precision riding is called for, but I suspect a bigger part of it is I am less in shape, dragging a little more junk in the trunk, more easily fatigued than last year because I have not been out as much. And I am comparing my early- spring shape of last year to my mid-season shape this year. I didnt ride much last year until early spring because it was such a bitterly cold season, but once spring rolled around, I was ready. I had been running, stationary biking, swimming, rowing and lifting all winter. This year, we are both finally getting so soft we have decided that a rec center pass is inevitable, even though we are no longer living so close to it, so we will have to plan our days around our work outs instead of having them be the afterthoughts they were last year. I remember making run after run down the 'Zuma line last year, my knees to my chest, then my board behind me, launching on my toe edge, landing on my heel edge, snow chunks hitting my face, gyrating and flexing and catching air with each bump, hitting the end of it and tasting blood in my mouth from breathing so hard, soaked in sweat, shivering up to the top of the Montezuma chair and doing it again. I haven't ridden like that this year. I want to, but I just don't get the days. And when I try, I just can't do it. I'm chicken and I'm soft. Bobby did not even get a pass this year. I need to ride with someone who pushes me, but everyone else, like me, is too busy to go out. Oh, well, we are happy we have jobs.

And now, it is time to close the laptop and start doing the stuff that life is made of.

Some pictures really are worth a thousand words, I am told... so we'll just save the words on this one.

Hello to the land of fluffy white stuff... where you have to see it to believe it. Here are those pictures I did not post to my last post.
So, I went cross-country skiing the other day... this is one of those sagebrush-filled meadows behind our house. I made a few fresh tracks coming back down to the house... somehow not quite as much fun on skinny skis with free heels... but still pillowy soft.
View from the cockpit...

On christmas day, B and I took the snowmobiles into an area we'd never been, and I ended up burying it in some hip-deep fluff. We worked hard getting it unburied, but hey, the views were good. That's Keystone you see.
One of those days, it snowed and I got to take a few hours to snowboard. I really have had some epic turns (and tumbles- can you tell by all the snow packed in your blogger's face?) this year already. Austin joined me on the last run, and we hit the trees... and got flatted out and buried. Oh well, a bad day in the trees is still better than a good day on the groomers!

There is always soft snow in Keystone's most accessible powder stash, the Windows. Just stay out of the Snake Pit unless you want to grind a few tree trunks. Yeah, those are my tracks- I was the first one back there that morning.


And last but not least, B got to take a morning and go snowmobiling with the boys the first week of December. He's the man when it comes to the S-turns! (he really is, don't let this video fool you... it is included because it is much more entertaining than the ones he doesn't fall off in!)

Hello from the land of deep sighs of relief, post-holiday detox, and a balmy, sunny January 2nd. In three days, after the 5th, our rush will be over(ish). I had the day off today, letting Cassandra, the other inspector, cover for me. I drove to Keystone to do an inspection first thing this morning (ok, so a day off never actually means no working at all, just most of a day off). As I finished the inspection, I did my usual pat-down of myself (phone, keys, season pass, goggles, gloves) and prepared to ski, and realized that in my rush to leave the house, with it being such a warm morning, I had forgotten my coat. With the wind making goosebumps on my arms already in the parking lot, skiing coatless was not an option so I drove back home and retrieved it, then drove to Marci's place and parked in the parking lot beside her condo complex. Hopped a shuttle for the mountain, stepped into my skis, and hit the slopes.

In the last several days, I have Learned to Ski. Oh, i have gotten down the mountain just fine until now, but now I am finally getting brave enough to tackle (albeit timidly) the bumps and trees, knowing that I am in control, knowing that I can turn when I need to. Oh, I had a few crashes today, but no injuries- no new ones, anyway. Last night, I made a rookie mistake and had one of those low-speed crashes that can really mess a person up. Why is it, on skis or a board, that the low-speed crashes always hurt so much worse? I have caught an edge going 50 miles per hour, tumbled, rolled, flopped, and finally skidded to a halt, gotten up, and suffered nothing more than mild whiplash and several bruised fingers. But I have also lost my balance on a flat spot, or dropped my nose into powder while barely moving, and created injury to knees and behind that plague me to this day. Such was the story last night while night skiing. Shuffling out of someone's way, I got myself all six ways from Sunday and finally sat down with an pop from deep inside my left knee. I lay there and moaned a bit, then told myself to stop being a baby, got up and finished out the night. Denied the pain all evening, then had it wake me up every time I turned over in my sleep... and still decided to deny it this morning, hobbled around the house until it loosened up, and once on my skis, started having so much fun I almost forgot about it. And by late afternoon, apparently it decided that sending pain signals to the brain wasn't doing any good and decided to leave me alone, except for protesting a few torque-creating moves on my cross-country skis. It allowed me to ski all morning, then cross-country ski this afternoon, then clean house all evening, but now that I am lying on the couch, it is stiffening up again.

If you are wondering if I have become confused and starting calling snowboarding skiing, I have not. I really am skiing these days. I am surprised at how easy it has been to pick up. I am doing things on my skis it took me two years to do on my board, and it opens up terrain options that used to really suck on a board. The traverse at the bottom of the bumps and trees on the Outback Mountain are not quite as daunting now, because I have poles and can skate out of the flat spots. But I have to admit, I still do feel just a tiny bit uncool. I find myself mentioning that I usually snowboard if I am stuck on a lift chair full of snowboarders.

The last warm day, about five days ago, was a slightly slower day, which gave me time to ride my bike to work. I layered up and pedalled through the ice and snow, and remembered how much I love biking. Snow sports are fun, better than fun, but I just really do love biking the most. I think it is because of the freedom and speed, not having to stay between the ropes at the resorts, but just out in the backcountry. Maybe once I try backcountry skiing, I will be as much in love, but i doubt it, since I will not be allowed to backcountry ski by myself (not that I want to) so I will have to wait until I can go with someone else.

Jay and Wendy came up over new years so that Jay could ride snowmobile a bit before he starts a new job in Scott City. Since we already had plans to go to our friend's house for New years eve, we invited them along, as well and Austin and Cassandra and Marci. We make quite a bunch when we are all together, but our friends are very flexible. We had dinner, then the plan was to go to keystone for the torchlight parade and fireworks at nine oclock. Out of 16 of us, only four of us ended op going to Keystone. All of our group (except me) went home, and everyone else played games while four of us loaded into the car with Raisin, the six week old puppy (These are the same people who's dog Roxy died a few months ago. They just got a new puppy last week.) Raisin got a little scared and ended up being carried inside her new mommy's coat as the fireworks exploded overhead, and got spotted by one person, who wanted to pet her, and one person turned into about twenty. Nothing like a puppy to break the ice in a crowd of complete strangers.

And although B thinks he may be sniffling a bit more than usual, no debilitating colds over new Year's. We hope it is because we are not quite so sleep-deprived this year, a result of having the staff to cover, or actually abort all the crises that usually arise. We had an especially trying run of Christmas guests this year, but our New Year's guests have been angels. At least, we have no evidence they have been anything but. We will see upon their check out how angelic they were. The phones are amazingly quiet for having so many guests in-house, unlike the daily calls from uptight Missourians who "expected so much more for ($X) a night" over Christmas. We do not know how to tell them that with holiday rates, we do not turn into a full-service, luxury concierge service. The higher rate simply means they have a roof over their heads, hurriedly cleaned, appliances held together with whatever we could rig in the six hours we had to fix what the last guests broke before they checked out that morning, because if they did not want to pay ($X) a night, hundreds more would pay that and more, if only something was available. And that if they wish to come during a lower-rate time instead of smack in the middle of the holidays, we will be much more accommodating, their condo will be cleaner and in better shape, the pools and hot tubs will be warmer, the repair contractors more available, the ice more cleared from their porches and driveways, and their trash picked up in a timely manner. But we are through that now. From here until President's Day weekend, we charge less and have more time to provide a quality lodging experience, and those who pay more over New Year's and Spring Break are not the type to demand perfection, only that we leave them alone and let them do their thing.

And, as of two days ago, it has become clear that the time of the fresh fruit, raw veggie, nut, bean and whole grain has come again. It is time to clear out the system, get some fresh air and sunshine, remember to take those vitamins, drink lots of water, sweat out some toxins ingested over the course of two stress-filled, coffee fueled, manic weeks in which the food in the fridge rotted and meal preparation was limited to either "I'll have the special, please", or "Please don't ask me to cook... don't you have a frozen pizza in the freezer?" One can only have so many Veggie Patch pitas at the Keystone Pizzeria and Pub before beginning to lose enthusiasm for them, but starvation is not an option. One effect of running all day in high altitude is that one feels sweaty, weak and shaky before one actually feels hungry. I stumbled upon a box of forgotten Mozzarella sticks in a freezer at the end of one of those days in which nothing, not even water, had been ingested for the last eight hours- eight hours of non-stop running. Even though I do not eat cheese, the resolve went out the window and i dug in, frozen though they were, and about a dozen sticks later, stopped inhaling them to read the nutrition label... upon which the rest of the box got tossed into the nearest trash can. I had known they were unhealthy, but did not realize until too late that I had exceeded my entire day's allotment of calories, fat, and sodium in about fifteen minutes of chowing on frozen, rubbery bits of curdled animal lactation rolled in hydrogenated oil, refined flour, and MSG. Oh, yes, if you are thinking things like "stinkin' grasseater" right now (you now who you are) I can hear your derisive snort from here. I won't live longer, you say, it will only seem like it. And I shall what I do, shrug and say I would like to be able to live the heck outa the few years I do have. No guarantees that I will be able to, but it can't hurt to try, right?

And now, if I do not get this posted, it will sit on my computer screen another 24 hours (it was started last night). Sort of like my Christmas cards. New year's cards. Whatever. They're still sitting on our entryway desk, awaiting mailing. And if you do not get one, please do not take it personally. They were an experiment, which resulted in my not ordering enough, which resulted in them going to only a few immediate family, and a few neighbors. But as soon as I stick 'em in the mail, I will also post one here, so you can get one, too. Trust me, my list was much, much bigger than the pile sitting on the desk.

Oh, goodness, putting pictures in this post would mean me searching for the camera, searching for the cord, loading them onto my computer, uploading them to this blog... I'll do pictures next time. Maybe. Unless doing pictures means delaying the posting thereof. In which case I'll just write, and hope nobody misses them too much.