| Not before My First Cup of Coffee
Man to lady pushing onto train: Look, I can’t go in much further unless I start sodomizing the guy in front of me. Guy in front of him: Yeah… I really don’t want that. —Crowded L train, Bedford Overheard by: KiltMan |
I was up a half-hour before my alarm went off, which was set for 7:30.
Rick jerryrigged a coffee filter out of a paper towel, and I hard-boiled 3 eggs, while we took advantage of the wireless Internet connection in the den area.
I made us some cheese toast, since we don’t have butter, and I enjoyed mine with a hard-boiled egg. Rick had oatmeal after his. The coffee was pretty good, with no noticeable coffee grinds in spite of the fake filter.
We checked the weather report, which varied wildly depending on the source.
The Snowshoe web site said that it was 16° at the top of the mountain and 17° at the bottom, with a high today of 38° and a low of 32°.
weather.com promised a high of 43° and a low of 31°, with the current temperature being 3°.
John promised, “If it’s 3° out there, I’ll be going out at about 10 or 11 o’clock.”
We walked around to the lift at about 9:15, and were “off and running” for the day. We did a couple of runs on this side, and then crossed over to Cup Run.
We did two or three runs there, and then stopped for a Hot Chocolate and a brewski. I had the hot chocolate. With whipped cream.
Rick left to do a couple of extra runs, and we never caught up with each other until meeting back at our place for lunch.
The lift line on Cup Run actually got long, which wasn’t good in terms of what must be happening on the other side of the road, and no one was managing the line. Annoying.
I worked my way back over to the other side to try and make my lunch commitment time of 12 or 12:30 back at our place.
Okay, I have just one question. With only five lifts in an area, why would you put the word powder in two of the five lift names? Aren’t there enough words to go around?
I waited close to 30 minutes in the Powder Monkey Lift line to take me back up to our room, only to find at the top, that it’s the Powderidge Lift that takes you to our place.
I saw a sign from where I was at the top of the Powder Monkey Lift that pointed to the Powderidge Lift, and I took it with a vision in my head of it taking me to the top of the Poweridge lift. Wrong.
Ten minutes later I was at the bottom of Power Ridge in yet another lift line to finally make it back to our place by one.
Rick was already there when I got back, and he had some Campbell’s Chunky Vegetable Beef with Barley soup ready, which I enjoyed with a sandwich and some chips.
He was also working on dinner, preparing the meat sauce to slow cook and marinade for this evening. Sweet!
I caught up my blog some, while glancing up now and again at Sister Act. I love Whoopie.
We never did go back out to the mob scene on the slopes, instead opting for an hour nap and then driving over to see our favorite bartender après-ski.
It wasn’t as festive there today as it was yesterday, but then again: we weren’t as tired, we weren’t waiting for our room, and we didn’t drink quite as much.
Once again, our bill came to exactly $18.00. Something’s up with that, because we know my cocktails are $5.00 a piece (but a great price even at that as they are at least twice the size of the $3.50 ones at Flex, which I also consider cheap), and Rick’s beer is $3.50 a bottle.
We upped his tip to just under 30% this time—now that we (think we) understand how it works.
We came back to our place, where we had the most delicious dinner ever—Rick’s spaghetti and meat sauce was out of this world, and it was complimented with a killer salad and some Texas Toast garlic bread. It was all good.
While Rick cooked, I trekked (that would be about 150 feet, but I like that choice of verb here, because it makes it sound like I did more work than I actually did) out to the wood shed, where upon opening the doors, I was delighted with two things: 1) a light came on, and 2) no rats scurried about.
We had a hard time starting the fire with no kindling. I sacrificed a copy of what’s acting as my thesis paper for my Master’s Degree as kindling—37 pages of big words that wouldn’t keep a little fire going.
I said to Rick, “That piece looks wet. Look at those two wet areas right there.”
“That would be the Olive Oil I poured on the wood earlier as lighter fluid.” With that failed ignition concoction attempt, he proceeded to retrieve the bacon grease-soaked paper towels from the trash can, which not only got the fire going, but also gave off an aroma that made us want to fry up some eggs and hash-browns. But I digress…
We decided to go back up to the, by now our favorite, bar to see what it looked like a little later in the evening on a Saturday night, and to see if our newly-found discount still worked.
As we made the hair-pin turn out of our condo area, we saw 5 deer right next to the side of the road. Purty.
There weren’t very many people in the Top of the World Bar this time, and the bartender didn’t even take my credit card to start running the tab this time. We weren’t sure what that meant, but just ordered on. He said that it would “pick up” in a little while, but it never really did.
A game of pool (with a rack that included two 4 balls and no 13 ball), three bourbons and diet, 3 Bud Lights, and a shot of Wild Turkey on the rocks later, our tab had gone up a whopping $2.50, making it $20.50 instead of the usual $18.00. I added a 50% tip to my card this time.
On the way back to the room, we stopped in two places looking for free newspapers to use as kindling for the rest of the weekend. We had to buy a paper at the little over-priced “Provisions” store—Rick said he heard on one lift ride that the people he was riding with had gotten a head of lettuce there today, and it rung up for $8.20—but when I put the $.50 in, the rack wouldn’t open.
We stopped by the Shaver Center, where I ran in to find a rack of the Winter/Spring 2007 edition of the “Mountain Highlands Traveler” local free newspaper, of which I grabbed about seven copies.
We were up for just an hour or so after we got home, and by the time we went to bed the wind was whipping around outside, and it was snowing.
Several times during the night the wind blew ice against the windows, and the people upstairs from us didn’t get to bed until 2:30, walking heavy, and in and out of their unit (probably smoking), and talking loud right outside my window.
They obviously won’t be at the lift at 9:00 tomorrow morning.