Skiing Expedition

Saturday morning R, myself, and our friend Midori made the trek to Hunter Mountain via the Emilio's Ski Shop tour. Not a bad deal, just early hours: up at 4 to leave at 5 to catch a bus that leaves at 6:30. Yowza! But really, it's worth it in the end: there's nothing quite like hitting the slopes early in the AM. Too bad the rental lines were so long: gotta get my own gear, but that's a separate story.

Beautiful day out there nonetheless. Huge vertical on the main mountain. Temperature was about 40 at the base, low 20's at the top of the 1600 foot vertical, and so windy! Had some good rides in before we stopped for lunch.

In a way, I wish we hadn't stopped for lunch.

Was doing just fine in the morning, a little bit of the boot pain setting in. Then, after lunch, we made it back to the top. And my legs just didn't want to work anymore. I don't know how to describe it, other than, I just couldn't turn to the right gracefully anymore. Turning to the left, no problem. But trying to shift back to the right - not so good. Like damned dangerous. I'm on top of a mountain, on a decently slick slope, and I cannot stop. I will crash. And die. This is not good. So I did the only sane thing to do: slide it down to safe territories again and figure out what the hell is going on.

In the end, I determined that due to muscle strain on the inside of my lower leg (gastrocnemius perhaps?) coupled with some tiredness in by upper right (gluteus, yes), with a bit of slick ice caused by the sun, was enough to throw me off.

I worked my way down the black diamond part of the hill, took my skis off and chilled for a minute. My legs at this point did indeed feel pretty much shot. Fortunately, there was an easy glide the rest of the way down, which I could navigate no problem. And that was pretty much it - time was running out and we had a bus to catch. Before long we were on the way home, with the bang bang movie Rock and Rolla playing on the bus tv.

Personal firsts from the trip:
Early morning weekend train trip... some dude was leaking puke (not that interesting but worth mentioning)
Traveling to Harlem, hello UES
Traveling to the Bronx, seeing Yankee stadium
Going upstate in NY
Driving through suburbia and missing the convenience of having a car
Not being able to ski down a hill (g'hoh!)
Stopping at NYC's first Juice Bar, Papaya King (the papaya drink really is damn good!)