MLK Weekend - 2009

I have been serving jury duty the last few days, and am really hoping that the case is resolved by the time I have to leave next weekend. If it's not, I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I started on the 14th and we were told by the clerk that 10 days was enough of a margin of safety to not request a postponement. Given the free time on my hands, I wanted to get it done with anyways.

We were at Okemo yesterday, with the temps ranging from -2F through 12F, although there was no wind but clearly it was severely cold. The cashiers even gave us a few discounts for future lift tickets since it was so bitter. Afterwards we met some of Jenn's co-workers for apres ski, which is one of the few times I've done that at my own home mountain, since I was normally in a hurry to get back so that Lena could get walked etc. It's weird not having to hurry back home now. One kind of interesting thing we saw was that J's cousin Kim and her family are being used for the the Okemo Mountain Photographer's sample family shot in the main lodge. It's an excellent photo of them, but I think it was Photoshopped a little to make the colors more vibrant.

The mountain was totally open with all the lifts running, and although conditions were putatively "packed powder", I would have characterized them as more machine groomed with lots of crunchy man made snow. We buzzed around the main mountain and J. got introduced to many of the more interesting intermediate level trails including the bigger ones like Chief and Boomerang. We got home and made a pot of fondue with the one we had brought home from Gstaad. Today it snowed about 4 inches so we stayed in doing chores and loading the wood stove while we baked brined chicken breasts and potatoes au gratin.