The stars aligned for a skiing weekend in New Hampshire. After completing our respective weekly long runs on Saturday morning (me with a killer 20-mile progressive run that would seem to indicate I am theoretically capable of qualifying for Boston at the Hyannis marathon in four weeks; Mr. P with an “easy” 12 miler), we left Saturday afternoon. We arrived at our hotel in time for a quick dip in the pool followed by dinner in Littleton, NH… which is of course a political epicenter these days. Evidenced by:
Jeb! Jeb! Jeb!
“What’s Jeb!?” Little Boys asked, inflecting the word with the enthusiasm or perhaps surprise required by the exclamation mark (as a dutiful second grader would).
Excellent question. What is Jeb!? Since it never occurred to Little Boy that it might be a person’s name (for such a strange name it is, and anyway where we come from people don’t advertise themselves in storefronts), I was tempted to tell him it was a type of soda, because looking at the signs, the first thing that came to my mind was soda!
After a nice relaxing night, we woke up Sunday morning, attacked the breakfast buffet, and then headed out to Cannon Mountain. With its steep, icy terrain, Cannon has a reputation as being an “expert” mountain. This could also be attributed to the skiing prowess I observed by people of all ages and genders throughout the course of the day. I’m a competent but slow skier, yet it’s pretty rare that I’m the slowest skier on the whole damn mountain.
For the White Mountains in January, it was a warm but cloudy 30 degrees. Little Boy had a blast. As usual, he complained and moaned about not wanting to go all the time until we got on the ski lift for the first run. Then it was (mostly) all smiles.
I think his eyes are closed but it doesn’t matter
I look like a giant
Chillin’ on the ski lift
We skied for about four hours, with some lunch in between. By the last run, my quads were burning; the soft (manmade snow) plus the steep slopes made my first ski of the season quite a little workout.
Before hitting the highway back home, we stopped for gas and I bought a six-pack of Tuckerman’s, a local New Hampshire brewery, the Bode Miller edition (in honor of our day at Cannon Mountain, Bode Miller ‘s home mountain and the home mountain of scores of aspiring Bodes.)
