I taught an afternoon group of 1. After work Celeste and Dylan were having a talcum-powder fight. |
No lessons on a Saturday! It rained all day. That night was the learning Center party (crappy food for $8!!) where i won the "Snowboard Rookie of the Year" award, apparently "by a landslide". |
The Slush Cup took place today. I taught a morning group of 1 (the only snowboard lesson of the day i think), then took pictures of the Slush Cup. Tyler (above) definitely got the loudest audience applause when he lined up and completely sprayed the judges. |
Monday. No lessons. |
Last day off. I took the dogs hiking along Bully Brook. |
No lessons again, so i rode all day, over jumps and through the half-pipe. |
Again no lessons, so a lot of riding, as well as a little jamming in the locker room. John Keough brought his dog in that morning. |
Rode all morning, then taught an afternoon group of 1. When i got home i took the dogs over to the Mill River, right next to Route 7. We hiked around a bit, and as i was scrambling over some rocks along the gorge, i wondered if the rattlesnakes were coming out yet. Lo and behold when we started back to the truck, a baby rattler was sunning on the pavement and struck at Teco as he walked by, although Teco didn't even notice. |
Taught an 11:30 2-person private, then an afternoon group of 1 kid who was convinced that the way he rode (really bad form) was fine and that he didn't need to learn how to do it any better. That evening i joined Phil and Maeve and we drove over to Curt's house for a little end-of-season party. Spud and i played horseshoes and lost to Phil and, um.. John? (i forgot). Those guys then lost to Fred and someone else, who Spud and i then soundly beat. |
Last day of the season. The kid i'd had the day before came out for an all-day lesson, so we split the lesson up. Tim had him for the morning, then i took over for the afternoon. I rode for a while in the morning, but i'd been riding so much on slushy snow for the past week that i needed to take a break for an hour or so before i rode with the student in the afternoon. He didn't want to learn anything, so we just rode all over the mountain. So after being one of the first instructors working, i had the last lesson of the year. 122 days of snowboarding for the season. Not bad. |
Slept in. Took the dogs over to the White Rocks picnic area and hiked up the Appalachian Trail to the White Rocks overlook. |
Took the dogs over to Okemo and visited with Rob for a bit. Rob invited me out to see the Lacrosse team he coaches play a game that evening, so i took the pups (on leashes) up to Rutland to watch the boys varsity team lose to Woodstock in a score-fest 19-13. Rob's wife and kids Ellen and Samantha were there, and each girl took charge of a dog on its leash for a while. |
I drove out to Wallingford Pond and hiked with the dogs out to the pond, which was still frozen. Later that afternoon, Phil called and i met up with him at Buttermilk falls where we took my dogs, his dog Belushi, and Maeve's dog Tucker for a walk along the creek. |
Walked with the dogs down the railroad track and over to the cemetary. the sun on the doorknob of my back door looked pretty cool. |
Hiked north on the AT/LT from White Rocks up to the top of Bear Mountain. I think there's probably 20 Bear Mountains in Vermont. |
Drove down to South Wallingford and hiked into the Green Mountain National Forest along Homer Stone Brook. |
Dropped off my truck at a repair shop in Clarendon for its 90,000 mile service. Before i dropped it off, i stopped at the supermarket in Rutland and turned in all my collected change, for which i got $110! As i was leaving the garage on my bike, i realized that i left my gloves at the supermarket, d'oh! So i rode home with freezing hands, but made it OK. |
Late in the afternoon i biked back to Clarendon (long uphill) and picked up my truck. |
|
Took the dogs north along the Otter Creek in Wallingford. |
Drove over to the AT/LT parking lot along Route 103 and hiked along the Mill River for a while. There was a really cool cable suspension bridge there which Seera went over trepidatiously but it took a long time for me to coax Teco over it. It wobbles and sways as you walk over it. He did a little better on the return crossing. |
My back was hurting from not enough snowboarding and too much sitting at my computers so that evening i decided to go out and veg in front of a movie. Kung Fu Hustle was pretty hilarious. Worth seeing, just don't take it too seriously. |
Took the dogs over to the Mill River again but didn't hike much, just hung out skipping stones. |
Hiked up to the Ice Beds at the White Rocks picnic area. |
Drove west out of Wallingford, then south down to Danby, back across Route 7 and up into the Green Mountain National Forest. The dogs and i hiked up along the Big Branch Brook, which had huge boulders in it and was crystal clear. I was hopping along the brook from rock to rock and Teco was following along in the trees, but every time i'd hop up to a boulder, i'd look down and there was Seera right next to me on the rock. She's becoming quite a good hopper. |
Took my guitar and bass and amps over to Aaron's house in Ludlow and we jammed for a while. I got there at around 4:00, we started playing at around 4:30... at about 9:30 we realized how late it had gotten with no dinner, so we packed it up. |