Jan 26, 2014

Another early start to the day. Ryan and I made breakfast and then headed over for day two at Elk. It was supposed to be much colder today, but it felt warmer with the sun out. After a while it went away and I felt the cold even more.

There were far fewer people there this time so that was a plus. It was nice not dealing with groups of people getting in the way as much. The trails were groomed even more nicely this time. We spent some more time on the far side of the mountain, but soon returned because there isn't that much over there.

Once my goggles fogged up enough times to be annoying and we got cold enough, we decided to head out. It was a good day of skiing, but it was also starting to snow and we thought it might be wise to head home at that point.

Once we packed up the house it was time to head out. The ride home was interesting as my windshield washer fluid was not working so with the snow and the salt spray from the road it became almost impossible to see at times. We had to pull over once or twice to clean it. I tried to fix the fluid to no avail. Once we got closer to Philly the roads were better so it wasn't a problem anymore. Once I got home I was tired, but I ended up staying up late watching shows anyway.

Jan 25, 2014

Ryan and I were up pretty early making breakfast and getting ready to head over to the mountain. The nice thing about having two cars is that we don't have to all be on the same schedule. And it's nice that it's about a four-minute drive to the resort. We put our gear on at the car and took the shuttle up to the ticket office and then we hopped on the lift.

It was a cold but nice day. The trails were all pretty good, and we didn't see many lines until after lunch. Even then it was mostly just people congregating and getting in the way rather than actually being in a line that we had to wait for. We did a couple of races down a trail called Kickapoo. Some of the turns were a little icy so that made it fun. Other than that we did a good selection of black and blue trails and called it a day after about five hours.

We came back to the cabin and hung out for a while, waiting for the others to come back. Once they did, Ryan and I went down to Scranton to get dinner at Damon's. After a filling meal and a couple of beer samples (Sam Adam's Cold Snap, and Susquehanna Toboggan; both very good) we headed back for the night. Ryan turned in early and I stayed out with the rest of the gang drinking a bottle of wine and talking for a few hours. Sometimes that's the best part of the ski trip.

Feb 8, 2009

We got up in the morning and had more strawberry pancakes before Ryan and I headed over to the mountain for more skiing. We did a lot of trails in a short period of time. We had a few races, one of which was fun because it involved three separate trips down the mountain and therefore we were on the lifts for some of the race. It was an interesting part of it since we were alone on the chair and not moving faster than the other person at that point.

After we had tired ourselves of skiing, we came back to the house to find it empty. Carissa and Katie had gone tubing at another mountain. We packed up our stuff and watched Knocked Up until they got back. The drive home wasn't too bad for us, just a few sections seemed long.

Feb 7, 2009

Katie made some awesome strawberry pancakes for breakfast in the morning. I had a bunch and then I was ready to go.

The icicles were melting outside so we brought one in.

We headed down the road to Elk Mountain. It was literally five minutes from where we were staying. We got all our passes and such and got on the lift.

Katie was scared at first, but once she started doing it she realized that she was still able to ski without dying.

We had a lot of fun. Ryan and I did a few runs by ourselves while the girls were in the lodge.
"This place is full of blacks.... diamonds, not spades.." ~me

I took Katie on a blue. This happened. She got up and went down though and once we finished it, she wanted to do it again. She did it the second time with no problem at all.

When we got back to the house, we played Catchphrase for a long time. We switched up the teams a few times and laughed a lot.

It was a really fun day and quite exhausting. I was tired and ready for bed at midnight.

Feb 6, 2009

I got a job at Lakeside in the morning as an English teacher. It wasn't too bad, but the last period I had to cover for a gym teacher. The kids were playing bombardment, just hurling balls past my head. It wasn't pleasant. I came home and packed most of my stuff for the weekend before heading to alternative school for a short time to sub for a computer teacher. I was there for two hours and had one student.

I finished packing and picked up Katie then hit the road for the poconos. The roads to the house were icy, narrow, dirt roads.

We found the apartment we were staying in. Not what we expected but still pretty nice.

We went in and put our stuff away and started making some pasta. Ryan and Carissa got there shortly after that. We ate and sat around talking for a few hours before we finally got to bed around 3am.

I picked out the room with the creepy happy face alarm clock.