April 26, 2010

It is amazing how much time things take.  I think when you finally have the time to do the things that you always thought about doing, you discover how unrealistic those thoughts were to begin with.  Kris always says, “you can have anything you want out of life, but you can’t have everything”.  I think the corollary to that is, “you can do whatever you want in life, but you can’t do everything”.  There just isn’t enough time.

I think I have finally finished scanning our photographs and photo albums.  I think this is a great accomplishment, but it did take me forever to complete.  I am generally pleased with the results, a set of folders labeled by year going back a couple decades with dozens of photos in each folder.  I still have a couple hundred in a separate folder where I don’t know the year.  I don’t think I can ever be done with this effort.  I need to call an end to the task and just create some lasting backups.  If my computer crashed today, I would lose a ton of work.

The condo continues to transform.  Slowly, stuff is moving out.  The garage is getting a bit full with stuff that is on the verge of going in the dumpster and stuff that just needs to be given away.  We have also already hauled tons of stuff to the dumpster and even a little to the Salvation Army.  We have also hauled some stuff to the trailer.  We may get the condo on the market this week.

We bought a cat carrier.  We got a coupon in the mail that was a reasonable savings.  We could have held out for a few more bucks, but we really need the carrier within the next week so we took the deal that was in front of us.  The carrier is huge until the cat is in it.  Then it appears merely adequate.  We have a big cat.  Luckily the van is huge and the carrier sits neatly between the front seats.  We also measured her for a harness and the only options were in the dog department.  Even there, we weren’t looking at the smallest size.  We didn’t pull the trigger on the harness.  We aren’t sure we would ever put it on her.  We don’t plan to take her out for walks.  She has very little interest in the outside world at this point and we don’t see any need to get her interested.

We didn’t ski much last week, only two days.  The weather was uncooperative.  We were getting set to go on Thursday when it started precipitating.  After a full season, we didn’t have a desire to get wet.  An hour later, the precipitation had changed to the largest snowflakes I have ever seen.  The flakes looked like snowballs that slowly drifted down from the sky.  It actually began accumulating, although it melted quickly on the mostly thawed ground. 

We skied the weekend for a change.  Our friends from Fairbanks were back in town.  The resort was crowded on Saturday, although much of the crowd was not skiing.  It was Slush Cup day, the day a few crazies try to ski across a small pond cut into the snow.  I have always wanted to try it, but the penalty for failure is a dunk in icy water, a shock I don’t think I need in my life.  Only a small percentage of skiers actually make it across without getting dunked.  We didn’t even stick around to watch.  We were done skiing early and left before it even started.   It was probably a good choice since the traffic was unbelievable with cars parked everywhere.  I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to maneuver the massive van out of the parking lot through the maze of cars.

The skiing this weekend was fun.  We mostly stayed on the lower half of the mountain because the temperatures were warmer and the snow was softer.  It was also a way to avoid the crowd on Saturday.  We made a run up top, but I fail to see why all those people were standing in line to ski the top of the mountain when the bottom had turned to wonderful spring conditions.  The temperature didn’t even drop below freezing at the bottom on Saturday night so Sunday was even better.  We almost skipped Sunday due to a rainy start to the day, but Kris made some adjustments to her new boots at home and really wanted to see if it helped.  Luckily the rain had stopped by the time we got there late afternoon, but they had already closed Lower Bowl for the season.  We were left with only a couple of choices, but the steep bumpy stuff was so much fun that we made several laps.

We also stopped to watch the dummy races, another recurring springtime event.  Only half a dozen dummies competed so it was a short event.  Our attention span wasn’t going to tolerate much more.  The dummy races require entrants to put an inanimate dummy on skis and push it down a hill and over a jump.  Judges score the event.  We have only watched a little of this event in the past, but this year seemed a little more impressive.  All but one of the dummies actually went over the jump. 

Fire seemed to be a big part of this year’s event.  The one dummy that didn’t make the jump was intended to be a flaming dummy, but simply smoldered after tipping over early.  The announcers encouraged the owners to send it the rest of the way down the hill so they righted the dummy.  By this time, it was plenty hot and the aeration of movement burst the thing into a huge fireball shooting down the mountain.  The safety netting at the bottom stopped the fireball from shooting into the crowd, which had already parted from the path of travel just in case.  Then we had the problem that the safety netting was starting to melt.  Everyone began throwing snowballs to put out the fire.  I am sure this didn’t meet any insurance company’s standards for a sponsored spectator event, but this is Alaska; even the insurance companies don’t carry much authority.

As if that wasn’t dangerous enough, the next dummy was being lit just prior to being pushed down the hill.  As it started its gravity propelled descent to the big jump, rockets began to fire up into the air.  I was amused, but quickly recognized that this wasn’t a great idea and began backing away.  It was still firing as it hit the jump, flying high into the air.  It was still firing as it crashed to the ground and began tumbling.  It continued firing for awhile longer in completely random directions, even launching several rounds into the small crowd.  I ducked off the elevated snow that made a viewing platform.  Kris put her goggles back on.  I will miss Alaska’s culture of laughing in the face of danger, even though my aging sensibilities are conflicted by such foolishness. 

The final dummy was an artfully crafted four-foot-tall chicken on skis that some of the ski patrollers had put together.  While this one lacked both the pyrotechnics and the destructive impact on landing, I was completely amused that it stuck the landing after a massive jump and continued ‘skiing’ its way down into the safety netting.

Sunday was the last day of the season for the lower mountain.  Our weekends in May will require riding the tram to access the upper half.  As we rode Chair 4 for the last time, we discussed it.  We acknowledged a sense of melancholy with what could be our last ride ever on this lift.  The last time for many activities in life occurs routinely, with no discussion of its passing.  When we do note a passing, it is funny how sentimental we can get, even as we are moving forward to new exciting experiences. 

Chair 4 is one of the most hated lifts in North America.  Many resorts have an old lift that is brutally slow by today’s standards, but few are as critical a part of the day as Chair 4 at Alyeska.  The one benefit to a slow lift is that nobody wants to ride it.  As a result, the terrain is usually less crowded and the lift lines are nonexistent, even on busy days.  That is the reality of Chair 4.

Being such a slow lift, we had plenty of time to think and talk about our feelings on our last ride.  I estimated that we have ridden the lift 500 times.  At its slow pace, that means we have spent around 60 hours riding on Chair 4, two and a half days.  I commented on the irony of our sense of loss at the ending of 60 hours of pure torture.  We don’t know if we will ever ski Alyeska again after this season.  We don’t rule it out, but given our current direction, it seems unlikely.  And if we do come back, perhaps they will finally follow through on those supposed plans to replace Chair 4 with a modern high speed lift.  So we laughed a bit at the passing of Chair 4’s involvement in our lives, but we noted its passing.