After starting the year with a burst of writing, I took the last five days off and went up to Whistler. It was beautiful and sunny, and the views (http://www.flickr.com/photos/78523822@N00/sets/72157594514935628/) were spectactular. No fresh snow, but I was perfectly happy spending most of my time on wide open groomed runs. Midweek skiing is definitely the way to go, if you can swing it–no lift lines and fewer people on the runs, very nice stuff.
Also had some very tasty food this trip, including crepes, tapas and Belgian chocolate fondue. Yum! Good thing I got a lot of exercise skiing to cancel out all those calories :)
That Icicles pic is vaugely surreal and gorgeous.
vaguely, even.
Thanks! There were icicles coming off the roofs of almost all the buildings, which I thought was quite wintery and lovely.
Ice, lovely? Hmmm. And here I was happy to be somewhere with not so much ice.
You know, I’ve always classified skiing under, “Things People Do To Increase Their Chances of Dying”. Strapping things onto one’s feet to slide down the side of a mountain even faster than they otherwise would, it… well, it’s doesn’t appeal to me.
But the pictures are lovely. :)
Good god, man, it’s called “fun.”
“Some degree of risk involved” is pretty much conceptually integral to almost any activity at all likely to give pleasure to human beings. (Not that skiing is, statistically, even a particularly risky passtime, but still…)
If it was discovered tomorrow that there was a way of preparing asparagus that gave people who ate it a warm, plesant buzzing sensation behind their foreheads, it would be discovered the day after tomorrow that preparing asparagus that way increased your chances of getting brain cancer or something. That’s just kind of the deal.
Anyway, ditto pretty pictures. I particularly like the sun peeking out from behind the pine trees.
(Oh, and I’m equally happy to be living somewhere without ice, but I do think it’s visually fantastic. In Michigan, from time to time ice storms would knock out the power and it would suck, a lot, not to have heat while they ran around fixing the power lines, but I still always loved walking around looking at the surreally lovely ice-covered trees. One of the many reasons I think that the witnerlands, as much as I wouldn’t want to live there, are nice places to visit…)
You’ve got it exactly right about the ice–I wouldn’t want to live somewhere that was perpetually icy, but I enjoyed *visiting* someplace icy.
Perhaps it’s just that one of the things that triggers my asthma is cold air, but I’ve never found winter sports all that fun at all. I’ve consistently found them uncomfortable and nasty, even more than other sports. *shrug* That might also be why I much prefer to live somewhere where there’s not so much of a winter at all. It’s cool here, but livable. My few days in Saskatoon this winter — and during a relatively mild week — were pretty rough on me, physically.
As for asparagus and brain cancer… that reminds me, I have to get some rice. (I have some asparagus and I’m planning to make this Chinese spinach & asparagus soup, but I can’t have it unless I also have rice with it.)
Oh, I also imagine having no depth perception is not a big help in skiing.
But really, I don’t think it’d be fun. I am often surprised when I try things people say are fun, and discover they’re not that fun at all… to me.
I’d imagine the health benefits of the exercise I get while skiing more than cancel out any increased risk of dying due to ski-related injury. I think the people who are really increasing their chance of dying are the ones off in the backcountry jumping off cliffs and whatnot (something I definitely don’t do, and have no interest in doing).
And the ice was only lovely because I was on vacation. Five days of ice is about all I’m good for :)