Ski Tripping

Just as an aside, I think lichens are interesting organisms- kind like a fungus that grows its own algae for nourishment. But they live on rocks, not in the Underworld, and I don't know why someone made a movie about them. It's got to be like the dullest thing ever, except of course compared to stupid CG action movies.

By virtue of my having done it the most years in a row, I am now the chaperone of record on school ski trips. I do not enjoy this at all. The paperwork is annoying at best and I'm always the last one who gets to ski as a result, especially this time when I left my boots on the bus and had to call the driver on his cell phone and wait for him to get back. But, someone has to do it and I've at least done it before.

Camelback is a nice place to do a trip. It's a little far, but there's a decent complement of trails over a broad difficulty level, and it's a good place for beginners. The skiing was kind of odd on Thursday. There had been a bunch of snow the previous day, topped off with a dollop of freezing rain. After grooming, this left you skiing on something that felt like a combination of of manmade snow and crushed ice, all stuck together. It's not as bad as it sounds. It was kind of bumpy in spots, but there was enough that you could set an edge and turn. It was also lightning fast.

Skiing in these medium sized resorts has a completely different feel than at larger places. At Camelback, I cant take the fast lift to the top in about 4-5 minutes (if that) and then ski down to the bottom in about 45 seconds and then just go right back up again. I didn't even get on the slope until 10:45 and by the time I stopped for lunch at 12 I'd done at least 10 runs.

I got to have a variety of interactions with students. I rode lifts and skied with them, watched one crash into a cyclone fence and almost get mowed down by another when I was going over to help her. While we were in the infirmary having the crasher's wrist put in a sling, this boy came in and reported that he'd knocked himself out. The first aid people were trying to work with him but he kept insisting that he'd knocked himself out several times before and he was fine. Boys can be so stupid. He was actually almost getting belligerent with the guys because they wanted him to lie down so they could examine him. Finally he calmed down a bit when they told him irritability was a common symptom of a concussion. Oh, and if you didn't know, concussions are cumulative. The second one is always worse than the first.

The ride back is always more eventful than the ride up where everyone's sleepy. We feed the kids on the way, so this year we got deli trays with a variety of sandwiches. The downside to this is that buses don't lend themselves well to food distribution, so if you can picture 60 kids gathered around the side of a bus taking sandwiches and pickles off deli trays that are sitting on the pavement in an adjacent parking space (and someone forget to order napkins), you kind of get the picture. We also had bags of baby carrots and the obligatory carrot fight. We dropped one kid off at a rest area to the care of someone who claimed to be his father. And we got back to school without having left anyone at the mountain and so I guess it all went fine. And am I up for it again? Sure I am. Next year I have to take pictures though.