Skier Days: Sara(4), Caroline(2), Susan(0), Charles(0)
I picked up Sara last evening at the competition center. They coaches had put together a pizza party (one gluten free pizza please, courtesy of Pat's Pizza) that included some high intensity Wii playing on the new big screen TV mounted on the wall over the summer. By the time I got there it was just Sara and Tyler waiting in the dark. He really is an awesome coach and a really nice young guy. I am really pleased that he will be working with the kids this winter. He is not much more than a kid still himself and brings a lot of energy to the mix. The whole group seems to be melding really well. Sara was still hungry when we got back so we made a little bit of extra pasta and after a shower we laid out everything for the morning and dropped into bed.
I meet with my manager, Mac, every Tuesday morning and send him a little recap of he week every Monday. Somehow I always managed to procrastinate putting it together and today was no exception. So I was up just a bit longer before crashing myself.
Having a teenage girl is quite a roller coaster. This morning Sara was right on the ball. We got up with plenty of time, had breakfast and repacked her stuff for the day. The plan was to ski slalom gates today so we had screwed on her face bar and stowed her shin pads the night before. She had been scolded yesterday for not having sharp edges so the plan was to run the stone over them this morning. We did this together and they were looking pretty good, even with the hole still staring at us from the middle of the ski.
What a great morning and we even had some time to spare. I was planning on calling Mac at 8:30 so I suggested we head down early. Apparently the moon poked through the clouds because my previously princess like daughter was instantly transformed into a strange creature that I did not recognize. She refused to go down early and went back up to the condo. I was okay with a few minutes delay and so went out to take some picture of the not so snow covered slopes.
I ambled over towards Barker out on the trails and realized that I was practically where she needed to go in less than 5 minutes. I called her on her cell phone and told her that I would carry her stuff over and we could just walk. What came from the phone ear piece could be described most accurately as the type of feedback you would hear at a speed metal concert. Ten minutes of repeated cell phone calls and lots of screeching I ended up caving in and driving her down. During the ride down I managed to lay on a rather thick guilt trip and extract a promise to walk back at the end of the day.
I sent back and worked the day attending my first remote face to face, catching up on a thousand emails, generating a project status and working through a number of other open issues. I walked over at lunch and sat and ate lunch the deck of the lodge. Sara finished up for the day just in time to walk back. She was pretty beat after a hard day of skiing. We packed up the condo, did a bit of cleanup and then hit the road. Stopping once to drop off skis at Jack Frost and then by Gould to pick up Caroline's ski clothing that she had left with her pal Maddox's family. I am struck by how really nice everyone is on the campus and in town in general. Todd and I chatted a bit about the upcoming Thanksgiving and we hit the road again.
Sara was unusually talkative and for about the first hour we had some decent conversation about her day, her skiing and the kids in the program. We petered out and she started playing games on the laptop for the next couple of hours. We arrived home to find Jonathan there and MaryBeth on the way that evening. After unpacking the car we hung out for a bit and crashed.
In the morning I ran 3.5 really slow miles with Maggie and felt pretty good. It was much easier than running up Dreammaker, but I did run up the really steep hill in the neighborhood to wrap it up. While I was sweaty and dirty I finished up a little bit of left over yard work, vacuumed the downstairs of the house and did a bunch of other cleanup. Yummy lunch at Tom Yum Thai ...
Marybeth had a college project to see some history so we all drove up to Lexington and Concord and learned all about the revolutionary war. Caroline and I drove back together and hit up Trader Joe's to stock up on ready made food stuff for Maine. We ended the day hanging out and preparing for the crowd that is coming by tomorrow...
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