Today marks my 30th birthday. Joe helped me feel old this weekend by taking me skiing up on Mt. Hood. I've only been skiing 2 times before we'd moved out here and I think the last time I went was about 7 years ago, so needless to say I'm kind of a novice when it comes to the sport. But, I'm always up for playing in the snow so it sounded fun to me. We decided to be lazy and sleep in, so we headed up to the Ski Bowl for some night skiing around 3 pm on Saturday night.
The traffic was horrible and the snow was really coming down on us. It made driving really slow. We also had a bit of a scare when we got out to chain up the tires (a must-have car accessory in the Oregon winters!) and Joe realized that he had locked the keys in the car. Ooops. Luckily he remembered that he keeps a spare in case of an emergency such as this and saved ourselves hours of sitting in the snow waiting for a locksmith to come along. We chained up and soon were on our way.
There was no parking so we had to go up to another area and take a shuttle to the actual ski area. We got there around 4 and I got a good 2 hours in on the bunny slope before we decided to eat at the lodge there.
After eating, I'd decided that I rocked the bunny slope way too hard to go back on it and wanted to try out the big boy slopes. It was a beautiful ride up the mountain on the chair lift in the heavy snow...but getting off the lift was a bit of a challenge. Also...skiing on anything other than the bunny slope proved to be a challenge. I couldn't believe how horrible I was on the actual mountain slopes, even the easiest ones. I fell over and over and over again. I finally made it to the bottom and took a good long break before attempting it again. Second time up...more of the same. Fell after getting off the lift, this time only to be run over by a snowboarder. (My lower back is paying for that this morning.) Lots of falls down the steeper parts. But definitely better the second time down. Joe, who's been skiing since he was a kid, did much better and didn't even have muscle pain this morning. I hurt all over like an old lady.
We skied until almost 10pm....we missed the last shuttle and had to hike a mile back up the mountain to the car only to find it buried already. The roads were also pretty icy, and we had to keep the chains on for the most part of the ride back down the mountain. Didn't get home until almost 1am, and fell into bed, exhausted.
It was a mixture of fun and frustration, but I guess the good has outweighed the bad because we're definitely planning another trip out there before the end of the winter.
