Skiing!

I got my grocery store's weekly savings flyer in the mail yesterday, and as I was flipping through it I noted that the store is having an "Inauguration Grab 'N' Go Special." And do you know what the special is? Fried chicken! Seriously. So what do you think, is the store racist or just completely oblivious?

Changing the subject completely, Penn and I are back from our ski trip. We had such a good time!
Last Friday we went to a used sporting goods store and I was able to buy a pair of used skis, boots, poles, and nice gloves all for less than half the amount it would have cost to buy a new pair of skis and for only double the amount it would have cost me to rent for the duration of our trip. If I even use the skis just once more in my life they will have been worth the investment, and I like the pair I got. They're not super-fast, but that works well for me and I should hopefully be able to use them for several seasons before I need to upgrade.
We drove to Boston on Saturday and spent the night with one of my college friends who now lives there and then on Sunday we got up (before sunrise!) and drove the rest of the way to Maine. I would like to point out, by the way, that I drove Penn's stick shift truck on the highway in Maine for about an hour and a half so he could take a nap. I even had to go through a toll plaza, which I managed to do without freaking out and stalling! True, it was seven in the morning on a Sunday and we were in middle-of-nowhere Maine so there was pretty much no one on the highway except for us, but I still feel like that's at least a little accomplishment.
We went skiing at Sugar Loaf. I highly recommend it. Supposedly it's one of the very best places to go on the east coast, and while I can't vouch for that (since it's the first place I have ever skied on the east coast) I can say that it's very comparable to the place where my family used to ski in the Rockies, and apparently comparing anything on this coast to the Rockies means it's good. My only complaint about the mountain itself is that it was really, really windy. I've never been on such windy slopes. Given, I think we happened to pick a really windy week, too, but I was looking through the packet of brochures and several of the restaurants and in-town activities offered "wind hold" specials, so I think that means the wind is probably a pretty regular thing at Sugar Loaf. Here's how windy it was: several times I was skiing along and the wind would be so strong it would stop me in my tracks! Given, this never happened on a particularly steep slope and I'm not an incredibly fast skiier, but still. Pretty bizarre. At first I thought I was just being a wuss about the wind, but then on the windiest morning the ski report said something about "sustained winds of 30 mph with gusts up to 65 mph" and I no longer felt like such a weakling.
The little-too-windy factor was tempered by a lot of other really awesome things, though. There is a good variety of terrain, and all of the lifts led to many slopes so that even though Penn and I are at different levels (he can do anything; I will gladly do all blues and can often be talked into a black but I won't attempt double blacks...yet...) we could always get to the top and find something that would either work well for both of us or would allow us to split up and easily meet up again partway down the mountain. Our hotel was great because it was literally ski-in, ski-out. We would get up in the morning, bundle up, walk down two flights of stairs to the locker room to put on our boots and get our skis, and then we'd walk out the door of the locker room, pop our skis on, and get on the lift that was steps away from the back door. It was wonderful, especially at the end of the day when we were exhausted and wanted nothing more than to be back in our warm, cozy room, beer in hand. Most of the condos and hotels seemed to have a similar ski-in, ski-out arrangement, which is definitely a major plus for the mountain. The other great thing was that there was hardly anyone on the slopes. I suppose we just picked a good week to go and I'm sure some weeks (the spring break weeks, for instance) will be much more crowded, but we didn't have to contend with any crowds. Our hotel was nice and quiet and seemed to be at only half-capacity, at the most. We skied for five days and waited in line for a chairlift exactly twice (and both times the "wait" was about two minutes). Most of the time we could ski right up to any lift and hop on. There were many times when Penn and I would be the only people on a trail. I knew I was getting spoiled when I was approaching the base of a long-ish trail one afternoon and there were suddenly about half a dozen snowboarders in front of me and I thought, "Damn it, where did all these people come from!?"
Having entire trails to yourself is definitely a huge perk, but there were a couple of times when I thought, "This would be a bad, BAD situation if one of us fell and got hurt right now." On the fourth day we skied it snowed all day, which led to some really nice powder conditions and hardly anyone other than us braving the weather and taking advantage of it. There was a lift on the far side of the mountain that we liked because it went to the very top (well, as high as you could go) and led to a series of blacks and double blacks that Penn could do and a blue that I liked and would do a few times in a row while he tackled the harder trails. On the morning it was snowing we skied over there and got to the lift right as the operator decided they needed to close it because of the wind (and probably because it was snowing so hard at the top you could hardly see). So there we were, getting ready to sit down on the chair when the lift operator yelled, "We're shutting down, it's too windy." Since we were the only ones in line at that point (or even in sight, for that matter) and since our only other options were either taking off our skis and hiking back up to a higher point to ski down to a different lift or poling along a series of annoying, flat cross-cuts to get back to another lift, we talked the guy into letting us be the last people to head up. He shook his head and said, "You're brave," but he let us do it. It was definitely weird getting off the lift and hearing it grind to a stop. I realized at that point that we were pretty much on our own, and I was really grateful we were together, just in case something had happened.
Luckily, nothing bad or painful happened all week. We both had the usual post-skiing soreness, but I'm pretty sure Penn didn't fall once and I only had two minor falls and only one where my ski actually popped off. And even then I didn't go head-over-heels, it just popped off because I came off a powdery patch onto a really icy patch and the change in texture surprised me and I overcorrected and ended up facing sort of uphill, crossing my skis and flopping over. I pretty much fell uphill. Of course, the one time I managed to lose a ski Penn was ahead of me and couldn't help. We were on a black slope at the time, and usually when we did a black (or any trail we thought might be more challenging for me) Penn would let me start well ahead of him so that he could stay behind me to help just in case I needed it. It worked out pretty well, usually. I would start, he'd wait until I was partway down and then he would ski until he was slightly ahead of me and wait for me to catch up, we'd both rest for a second, then he'd let me take off again...as predicted, I was much slower and more cautious than he was (which is pretty much our personalities in every life situation, to be honest) but he slowed down and I tried to ski a bit faster and we were able to ski together in a way that was fun for both of us (at least, I think it was fun for him; he can save the crazy speed competitions for his next boys' weekend on the slopes...and as I pointed out, I'm much more fun for the apres ski experience than any of the boys are! They don't cuddle.) Anyway, fortunately just after I fell a woman came down the slope and stood below me so that I could lean on her to put my ski back on, so it wasn't a big deal. Penn asked what I would have done if she hadn't come along, and I said, "Uh...grabbed my ski and scooted down on my butt until I got to you?" which is honestly what I probably would have done because it was a pretty steep slope and I really couldn't stand up on my own.
Anyway, all in all the skiing was a big success. Penn is really good for me because he challenges me to try things I wouldn't try otherwise, but the couple of times that I said, "No. Really, NO. I am not going to do that trail, I don't feel good about it," he understood and didn't force me. I'll never be as fast as he is (I value the feeling of being in control of myself way too much to truly get flying) but I think if we keep skiing together I'm definitely going to get better. I was already much better at the end of our five days of skiing than I was at the beginning. I also realized that part of what makes me cautious is purely psychological. There were a few times where Penn said, "We're going to do this one," and I said, "What is this one?! I don't see it's name, how hard is it?" and he said, "Just do it, it doesn't look that hard, right?" and then we'd get to the bottom and he'd go, "You did a black!" I do psych myself up a lot more when I know that a trail is "Most Difficult," and now that I know that, I'm a little more willing to judge the trail based on how hard it actually looks and not on what color it supposedly is.
It really was funny how much our skiing could easily be a metaphor for our entire relationship. He challenges me to take risks and bend the rules a little bit and spend more time living in the moment. I think I challenge him to show more self-restraint and look more at what is best for the big, long-term picture instead of just looking for the in-the-moment benefits. It's a pairing that worked well on the slopes, and so far seems to be working well in life, also. We have a good balance, I think.

Anyway, now we're back in the real world. In Maine we'd gotten into a total old people routine: getting up by 9 at the very latest so we could hit the slopes, coming in for a quick lunch-and-defrost after 2-3 hours, going out for more skiing until 4, then eating dinner, having a few drinks, and watching football or movies until we fell asleep by 9:00. I was working out all day and sleeping at least 10 hours a night. I kind of wish life was always like that.
But now it's back to work for both of us tomorrow (I still have two weeks until I'm back in classes, but I start my assistantship work and an independent study project tomorrow). I'm not particularly excited about going back to real life, especially since I ended up wasting most of this weekend by getting sick. I started feeling sick when we were driving home on Thursday, and by the time we actually got home on Friday (after another night spent with college friends in Boston) I was feeling pretty lousy. In fact, I barely remember Friday night because I was so fuzzy-headed and loopy from cold medicine. One minute I was lying with my head on Penn's lap watching an episode of The Sopranos, the next thing I knew he was putting me in our bed. He literally had to carry me to bed because I was so sleepy and out of it! Yesterday wasn't much better, although I rallied enough to finally go to Slumdog Millionaire, which I really liked. Luckily, I'm feeling much better today. There are still a lot of personal things I want to accomplish before classes start again, though. We'll see if I can get any of it done.

And now to end on the same sort of completely unrelated note I started on, I would like to point out that Penn and I are currently drinking "HeBrew: The Chosen Beer." I'm not kidding! It was on the Make Your Own Six Pack shelves at our favorite liquor store, so we had to try it out. Who comes up with these things?!