I love birthdays. Costumes. Cake. Creative surprises. What’s not to love?
I do what I can to encourage everyone to have a kickass birthday and create memorable birthdays, and of course I plan stupid and ridiculous mountain twofers for my own birthday. Normally the entire month of May is devoted to celebrating my escape from the womb, and we certainly shot out to a good start, but something about my actual birthday this year was…. different. I didn’t want to celebrate. I didn’t do my countdown. I didn’t even want to drink a beer.
In a lot of ways turning 35 was like turning 31. A big, unexpected number that I was not ready for. I’m still working through my feelings about the big 3-5, and I hope to share more in the coming months, but for now know that even though I share bright and shiny and sunny things on my posts all the time, as with anything there’s always more to the story. With that in mind, here’s two stories from skiing in May:
Saturday, May 5, 2019 | Nisqually Chute Party Ski
We gathered a classic Turns All Year crew to go after our May turns together on Tahoma via the Nisqually chute. We arrived to sunshine and huge crowds and made our way in short order to the entry of the chute. In keeping with the Summit vs. Skiing Rule, we opted for skiing and voted to forego the Muir Hut and ski earlier in the day.
Can you see us? Should we wear more colors. A fireman and his devoted wife.
After a quick lunch, we dove head first into the chute where we were rewarded with playful, stable spring corn. We took turns descending the steepest portions, then had fun trying to grab photos of Kurt in the Chewbacca costume. Skiing the Nisqually Chute is one of my all-time favorite spring pursuits, and I’m beyond thrilled to have added another great trip to the roster.
Theresa slaying. Even more slayage.
Monday, May 13, 2019 | Wy’east (Mt. Hood) Summit Attempt + Nap
After a ton of hemming and hawing this year, we opted to go visit friends in Portland for my birthday weekend. As per usual, I took Monday off for my birthday (because I’m better at vacations than you) so we had three days. We visited an awesome Bonsai exhibit on the way down, helped our friends celebrate Mother’s Day by building a patio, then headed to the Timberline Parking lot to sleep in the lot.
The wind overnight, as it often is in Timberline, was horrible. The truck shook with the bigger gusts, and I hardly slept at all. Expecting warmer temps, we set an alarm for 4am, only to sleep through until 4:45am. The wind resulted in colder temps overnight, so our delayed start was a good move overall, yet the snowfield was still frozen solid as we started skiing.
I’m not going to sugar coat this. The entire way up was a complete sufferfest. I was having gastrointestinal distress, which thankfully I was able to (responsibly) relieve myself of after about an hour of skiing. But the wind kept blowing, my skins kept slipping, and the top of the mountain was getting no closer.
After more than two hours of struggle we reached the top of the Palmer Chairlift (at 8,800′), and I was wrecked. My stomach hurt. I hadn’t really eaten. I was tired of the wind and the ice. I dind’t want to take one more step up the hill. So we didn’t. We ate and basked in the sun and skied down icy corduroy until it became less icy corduroy and we were back at the car. Where I took a nap. At 8am.
Do not. Want. To climb anymore. A little food and a wardrobe change and now it’s time to ski.
For the most part, the insidious by-products of a Net connection failed to materialize, but a host of technical problems did, consuming the staff s energy for months. The Sequent, not yet upgraded, was further strained by the Net connection, which proved to be a huge resource hog. In January 1992, the first month of Internet access, The Well experienced what are sometimes called packet storms, arising from faulty router configuration. The system regularly slowed to a crawl and crashed several times a week. Although matters had stabilized and the Sequent had been upgraded by April, public debates now raged on The Well over the board s unwillingness to spend the money to fix things. For a year, Fig had been lobbying to hire a technical manager. When the board told him the business couldn t afford one, he asked for permission to raise the $10 monthly fee. That request, too, was turned down.