Impromptu last day

So this morning we woke up, had a relaxing time and then quickly scrambled when Uncle Mark called us to say that today was the last day of skiing at Horseshoe! Now you may remember last weekend that I said we were hoping to sneak in one last day on the slopes. JUST NOT TODAY. Seems our passes were good until mid April but Horseshoe decided to close early… ask Horseshoe and they say it is Airmiles issue… ask Airmiles and they say it is a Horseshoe issue.. you say potato and I say pooootaaatoooo.

So Bryant and I headed north to catch a couple of hours before the 2008 season came to a close.

What a great day we had!

We ensured we skied all the runs, we had some great conversations on the lift (just the two of us and with the random strangers we met) and we skied off trail a few times. We figured what were they going to do? Ban us for the season? There was less than 4 hours left in the season.

A great impromptu last day of the 2008 ski season.

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A romantic walk in the park

Kelly and I took the pups down into the Don Valley for a walk over the weekend. Ah it was sooooo nice;
- the river was running high with the melting snow,
- the ducks were teasing the dogs by hanging around on a sandbar that they could not quite reach,
- the sun was beaming down on us,
- the buds in the trees were starting to come out,
- and the carcasses of unidentifiable dead animals had begun to thaw just enough to attract Wiki to roll in…

Our nice walk in the Don became a messy bath when we got home courtesy of our little pain in the a$$ dog.
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A great finish to the 2008 ski season... or was it?

Friday we had a great day at Horseshoe Valley. We met up with Paul and Breda (mentioned previously in my Outer Limits post) in the lodge, and then the kids all went in different directions. Uncle Mark joined us for the first time this season which was great!

Kelly tried her new parabolic skis and although they took a bit to get used to, she really liked them after a few runs. Her skiing has improved so much because of our trip to Killington. Kelly said that she thought that she would ski a couple of days in Killington and then do the spa or the museums or whatever. She was blown away that she did (and wanted to do) 5 days of skiing… but wait, this is not a Killington post is it?!

Great day had by all, a nice finish in the pub (yes theme building here my friends) and a nice finish to a great 2008 ski season for most (Bryant, Caillie and I are going to try to sneak in one more day on the slopes).
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Outer Limits

There were so many families in Killington – in fact so many Ontario families! At our condo alone there were about 30 vehicles and I would say only two did not have Ontario plates.

One of the families we met up with was Kelly’s customer/friend Breda, her husband Paul, their daughter Carolyne and their many, many friends. Each day would end in the pub with the many stories told over a pint or few :)

Thursday I joined Paul and his buds for an afternoon of skiing and we immediately headed for a double Black Diamond. Wow! what an exhilarating run that was! All the ski lessons I took to learn how to use my new parabolics went right out the window… it was self preservation mode at that point!

Wow, what an afternoon!
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Ahhhhhh Killington

Wow what an amazing ski week in Killington!

All the kids, Uncle Bryan and Aunt Jane, Simon and Julia... Uncle Bryan throwing his wine all over Simon… but I digress.

While looking at the trail map over lunch after our first morning (spent on the ‘bunny hill’ Snowshed – granted a HUGE bunny hill) Kel asked me how much of the mountain we had skied already. I pointed to about 4” of trail on a map that was 14” by 20”… needless to say she was blown away!

The rest of the week was spent enjoying the mix of runs that would take you as much as a half hour to complete, and lift lines that were never more than 2 minutes long. Compare that to what we are used to in Ontario – 5 minute lift lines for a 90 second runs. In Killington we did 5 or 6 runs in a day, as opposed to 5 or 6 runs an hour at Horseshoe!

More to come… but in the meantime the evidence can be seen here.
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A great (windy-cold) day on the slopes!

What a great (windy-cold) time skiing this past weekend. Doing the run 'The Flying (windy-cold) Mare' enjoying my new skis... have I told anyone how much I love my new skis?! Enjoying my time riding up the chair (windy-cold) lift with Caillie and Bryn... we actually met a guy from Little Current on the Manitoulin. Then there was the (windy-cold... ok actually not) nachos and bevvies (cold) in the pub – great way to finish off a great day of skiing with Bryn, Caillie and Kelly!
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Punishment for being in Mexico!

So last week I got a call from Mykayla and Bryant telling me how bad it was in Los Cabos, Mexico (Bryant insists I clarify they said 'that day')...
'Dad our cab driver took us to the wrong beach' (insert screeching breaking car sound here)
Hold up! Wasn't it minus freeze our butts off last week in Toronto? I told John Brisbin about their comments at a meeting we had last week and he asked 'is there a wrong beach in Mexico?'
So my punishment for them is to take them from the 40 degrees they were enjoying last week to skiing in Killington... sucks to be them.
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Shall we begin?

I decided I would resume blogging. It has been a long while but this time I decided not only to restart the family blog but also to start a 'business' blog. For the first entry I have decided to write once and publish to both blogs... ok this may seem like I'm cheating or lazy but I am doing this intentionally as the topic works for both. After today they will diverge and there are NO promises that they will not come back together at some point but I do promise that most will not be this long. So now that the rules of engagement have been established let's begin.

For anyone who doubts the power of social networking (and in this case, Facebook) the proof was demonstrated at the Wing Shack in Whitby a couple of Sundays back. That is when four of my ex-bandmates got together for their first gig as an 80's cover band. The band was made up of Shaun Gillespie, Mike Turner, Antony Palleske and Darren Smith (ok Darren and I did one gig together as a Duran Duran cover band back in the actual 80's). I am sure the bar was thinking 'Sunday night of the Family Day long weekend – this will be a dead night'. How wrong they were! People were being turned away at the door, there was not enough service staff, and the bar ran out of alcohol! And why? As we waited and waited and waited at the bar for service a woman beside me turned to her friend and said 'how could they not have prepared for this big of a crowd? IT WAS ALL OVER FACEBOOK'. Years ago we used to handwrite and photocopy posters that we would run around downtown, and with a bucket of wallpaper paste we would plaster every flat surface we could find... and today you post it to Facebook and the world is your oyster!

At this point I will let the two blogs head in their own directions and see where we go from here.
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