The end of now

The last day of April came with blue sky and a few inches of fresh white snow, from last night's percipitation. I took my rando-skis and went to the top of the mountain. In fact, I was cheating a little bit, since I used the ski lifts as far as I could get, and then walked the rest of the way to the top.

Moving up the slope, step by step, with climbing skins under the skis, just me, alone. It's like time is slowing down. It's a moment for reflection over life, the universe and everything. Maybe diffraction is a better word than reflection. Whatever, by Huygen's principle it's not that much of a difference.

It always feels like time is running slow in the mountains. You can enjoy the moment, the present. Now is the transition between the past and the future. Now ends but always reappears. Now is always moving, and always forward.

The past will never come back. The past was good, and not so good. Anyway, it's nothing I can do about it. The future can still be shaped. Or maybe I canæt do that much about the future either. What happens will happen. Universum decides. I take it as it comes.

And then the skiing season has come to an end, for now. Six months from now, the white gold will be back >:)

(My rando-skis. Picture taken in the mountains today.)

Got snow

Many years ago, when he boys were small, I used to ski a lot in our local ski slope. I took the boys to practice in the ski club after school. in the beginning, I had to ski with them, to help them with the lift, and stuff like that. It was fun, and I learned many things from listening to the coaches. Later, when the boys grew older, they didn't need my help anymore, and I was tired of skiing the same old slopes every week.

The last years, I have done my skiing on the weekends in a much bigger resort. When driving little boy (who is not a little boy anymore) to the ski practice, I just sit in the cafe with my computer, working or reading stuff. But this week, I made an exception. Recently, we have got a lot of snow, the white gold. The conditions on our local slopes are excellent. So this week, I brought my skis, on both the evening practice, and this weekend. It was fun to ski the good slopes again. I did all of them, one after the other. Today I had a great day of skiing together with my best friend. Very good >:)

(Picture taken today, from the patio outside the cafe, in the lunch break)

Gold rush

Yesterday we had a crazy storm coming in from the west, with strong winds and lots of snow. Today the wind had calmed down. It was time for the gold rush.

The white gold; tons of it. Awesome!

Little boy and I took our skis and went out in the mountains. We had a full day of off-piste skiing in the powder. It continued to snow all day. Great. Best day of skiing so far this season.

(Picture taken today. The skier is little boy, and the photographer is me.)

Back in the snow

We got a foot of snow this week, finally. The kids were thrilled (and so was I).

The white gold, falling from the sky. Great!

This weekend, we had our first two days of real skiing.

Little boy's feet had grown larger since the summer skiing in June. So he needed a new pair of ski boots. We bought a pair of Lange Jr Racing boots, 90 flex (that's a measure of the rigidity of the outer shell), $370 with 20% ski-club discount. Very good boots. Older boy had the same type when he was 10-13 yo (his boots are worn out and thrashed long time ago).

New boots, high speed; little boy will be hard to follow on the slopes this winter. I'm lagging behind >:)

(I took the picture outside the cafe in our lunch break yesterday. Guess which skis are mine.)

Powder to the people

We had a really heavy blizzard this week, lasting for five days.

This weekend was the time to harvest, from the heavy snow fall. We went up to the mountains, and had a great time skiing in all the fresh powder.

The wind calmed down, but the snowfall continued throughout the weekend. I was off-piste skiing in the sparse birch forest with the kids. Today, it was powder all over the place, even on slopes that are normally groomed. Great! The white gold >:)

(I forgot my camera at home. The picture above was taken about a month ago. It's Little Boy skiing in the birch forest. This seemed to be the weekend when we forgot almost everything. When we stopped on a gas station on the way to the mountains, I found that I had forgotten my wallet and my cell phone at home. I asked my old lady to pay, but she had forgotten her wallet too. Fortunately, Little Boy had some cash that he got for his birthday a couple of weeks ago. He was kind enough to let me borrow his money >:D )

The first year

Today is my one-year blog anniversary. No big celebration planned. I will be out skiing again this weekend.

It's been a fun first year. I looked back to re-read the first post I ever wrote. It wasn't much.

I was going to write something about January, but then I found my 2nd post. It's still valid; no need to rewrite it.

Enjoy the white gold. Powder to the people >:)