As I alluded to via link last Thursday, I took a trip up to Hunter Mountain this weekend during the Great Blizzard of Twenty Aught Five. I'd never been skiing before but had signed up for a lesson and even though I completely expected to be incompetent and pathetic I was just going to grit my teeth and force myself through it and then after I made it back to the city (assuming I did not plummet off a cliff or otherwise kill myself) I would at least be able to say that I'd tried it. In fact, I'd gotten myself so hunkered down into this sort of survival mode that it wasn't until I was back lying on my couch and reviewing the weekend that it completely hit me that I hadn't been pathetic and incompetent at all, I'd picked up the basics of that skiing business pretty quickly and had spent hours going up and down the slopes and having the most amazing time. This photo is of a somewhat steeper slope than the ones I stuck to this time, but now that I have a stamped card certifying myself as having completed Level 1 ski training with flying colors I can move on to a Level 2 lesson on my next trip which I think should prepare me to glide down something like this. I still need to work on my slowing down skills a little, I found myself having so much fun once I started picking up speed that I kept neglecting them until I got near the bottom and realized that if I didn't wipe out on purpose I would be putting a Scooter-shaped hole through the wall of the ski center. Luckily, I also kind of enjoyed the wiping out, at least on the relatively gentle downgrades found in "The Briar Patch" (you know, now that I think about it, part of what made me feel surprisingly comfortable during this inaugural ski adventure may have been the fact that I was borned in de briar patch...) Anyhow, it really was a Great Blizzard of 2005, I'm even more fond of snow than I was before (if that is possible) and you may now consider me a skier.