Winter, resurrected

March 24, 2018 By

Good gracious, who writes a blog post entitled “the winter of my discontent” and then doesn’t write again for the rest of the month?! It’s been a whirlwind for sure but I’m happy to say that winter did eek out a brief comeback and I was able to have a couple of great ski days to finish out the season.

Ski Buddies

Bode and I went skiing with friends Porter and Julie and we had a blast! The last time we skied with Porter in January, he ended up getting hauled away in an ambulance so we were thankful everything went perfectly. The snow was soft, the sun was out and it was an awesome reminder of why we love this sport so much. 

We celebrated Jamie’s mom’s birthday the night before and while we waited for our food to arrive, Bode entertained everyone for a half hour with all of his silly jokes and brain teasers.  Well, my boy was primed and ready when there was an open mic moment while we waited in the looong line at the base of Silverlode. The brazen boy of mine skied right up and told his compelling, “What is brown and sticky?” joke. And the answer: “A stick.” Duh. I laughed louder than anyone because I’m his mom.

We were also thrilled to see Cosmo, BYU’s mascot shredding the terrain park. As we were skiing down, we overheard an adoring snowboarder say “he has the voice of an angel,” which is particularly mind-blowing because I didn’t think he talked.

The day was non-stop fun and even though I’m not superstitious, I know the reason.  As we drove to the resort, someone had attached a “Good Luck” balloon to a roadside carcass. God knew we needed a win and delivered His message through roadkill.

I had such an awesome time that I went skiing by myself the following week. Usually I hate to go solo–it’s one of the few sports I don’t enjoy by myself–but Park City had fresh snow, sunny skies and I skied the strongest of this season. It was one of those ski days I never wanted to end!

But alas, I had to race back to pick-up Hadley to take her to a two-day volleyball tournament in Salt Lake City. It’s been a tough season for her. She switched to being the setter and started out strong but following her accident, she had to miss the first tournament. Even though she barely missed a practice, there were some drills she couldn’t do those early weeks. She is 1 of 3 setters so the coach benched her and has made little effort to involve her, which made the problem even worse because when you’re not playing, you’re not learning the rotations or the position. I could start a rant about a myriad of other frustrations all of the other parents share but I’ll stop there. Unfortunately, the club coaches are also the high school coaches so no one wants to burn bridges. We’ll need to enroll her in BYU’s volleyball camp this summer to get her up to speed.

The good news is this coach did not attend the tournament and the substitute coach played her every single game for two days. And she did great! They won all of their games Friday night and were on a total high (they’ve lost pretty much every game this season). But those victories set them up for a day of defeats the next day. They got bumped up to the gold medal bracket and these teams were en par with my high school team’s level of play. So, we got HAMMERED. But if you have to spend two days watching these girls play volleyball, at least they’re cute.

 

My job will start slowing down after a big event I have on April 12th. I feel like I’m getting more of a handle on things and am enjoying the position and my co-workers.  I plan to drop down to a four-day work week soon; it’s a 3/4-time position but it has been all-consuming up until this point, leaving little time for anything else. It doesn’t pay well enough to justify my 1.5-hour commute five days a week so I’m hoping once things slow down I’ll be able to dedicate more time to Mile High Mamas and other freelance projects because money is still really tight with a mountain of medical bills (thanks to the snowboarder who refuses to pay for Hadley’s accident) and our backyard.  Jamie calls the next two months “hell” because we’ll be hauling in tons of rocks and landscaping our half-acre backyard. My garden will have to wait for another year…this summer, I’ll just be happy with grass.

We’re still not loving this house (maybe we never will) but goshdarnit, we have the most gorgeous plot in all of Midway so we can at least make our yard something to be enjoyed.

Filed Under: skiing

The winter of my discontent

March 8, 2018 By

This is the winter of my discontent. Last year was so incredible for winter adventures and this season has constantly come up short…and so have I!

Nordic Skiing

We finally got some snow on my birthday weekend and for the first time, we were able to Nordic ski the majority of Soldier Hollow. For most of the season, we were only able to ski on a 5 km loop of man-made snow. However, I was extremely impressed with the resort’s snow farming. Every time there was a storm (which was’t very often), the resort collected huge mounds of snow the kids nicknamed “the snow whales.” As the snow would start to melt, the groomers would spread the snow from the whales all over the loop. The conditions weren’t always optimal but I’ll tell you what: those kids had a BLAST climbing and skiing down those steep snow whales.

Bode has turned into a great Nordic skier and officially surpassed me this season, which really doesn’t take much. Though I love Nordic skiing and grew up skiing the track on the golf course near our house, I’ve never been very adept at skiing downhill on Nordic skis. In fact, I’m quite a hot mess. Case in point: There was a REALLY steep hill I nicknamed the hill of death along this 5 km track. The first time we did it, I barely made it down in one piece and last week, I crashed and burned. Big time. The hill was steep and icy and unlike downhill skis where you have glorious things called sharp edges and the ability to turn, your only method of slowing down on Nordic skis is to snowplow or telemark (the latter of which I do not know how to do). And so I tried the trusty ‘ol “pizza” and even that didn’t work on the icy slope as I barreled down at top speeds. As I neared the bottom, I thought “Maybe I CAN do this,” and then I wiped out…my worst ever on Nordic skis.

I was sore for days and in my former, stupider years I would have said YOU’RE MINE, MOUNTAIN and jumped back on that horse but since I’m older, wise and more injured, I took the opposite approach: I bypassed the hill entirely and cut across to the bottom of it. The instructor, Evelyn, waited for me at the top with everyone and asked, “Bode, is your mom really that far back there?” and then they noticed me already at the bottom, poised to take pictures.

I have no shame.

I was one of the fastest in his class last year but this year, he was in the “Snow Leopards,” the top level. I was among the slowest on the downhill (though the uphill climbs were definitely my strength). Thank goodness for Ethan who lagged far beyond the class and was my excuse for falling beyond.

Last week was the final week of class, which was really sad because we finally have snow for the first time all year. We had a beach party and the kids had a blast doing obstacle course races and climbing the snow whales. Bode has gotten really good at skate skiing and was the very last one in the group of 30 kids to be tagged in “Infection.”

Bode and his buddy Henry

Conquering the snow whale

I’m not sure if I should be proud or a bit worried.

Downhill Skiing

Last year was such an epic one with downhill skiing and I truly couldn’t get enough time on the slopes–between SkiUtah Board meetings at Solitude and Sundance to our memorable “Interlodge” experience at Alta (we thankfully had two awesome ski days), to frequent ski outings with the ladies and Bode. I loved skiing Utah!

But this year?  From Hadley and our friend Porter’s ski accidents to dismal snow, the odds have not been ever in our favor.

Last Friday, Jamie and I both took the morning off work to finally hit the slopes together. We were right in between two storms and we figured we had perfect timing.

Oh, how wrong we were.

The problems started in the parking lot. As we were putting on our gear, Jamie got an urgent call from a client. After waiting for him for 15 minutes, he waved me ahead to start skiing. The snow was OK but the wind and resulting cold were HORRIBLE.

By the time we finally connected over an hour later, I was ready to call it but I wanted to give him the chance to ski. We headed over to our favorite run, Powder Keg, and the conditions were sub-par and I wasn’t skiing the moguls very well. They vacillated between being icy to having weird powder stashes and branches sticking out. It was not my best run.

Silverlode is the chairlift we usually take back up but the lines were so atrociously long–almost all the way back to the lodge. And then we found out the reason.  The 7,300-acre resort consists of two sides–the Canyons and Park City. We were skiing Park City but due to the brutal winds, the Canyons never opened so all those thousands of displaced people drove over to Park City. I motioned Jamie to bypass Silverlode and keep skiing down to King Con Express, which typically has smaller lift lines. Lo, was I wrong. All the lifts ended up having Disneyland-esque lines, worse than any holiday or weekend I’ve ever skied.

As we waited…and waited…and waited to board, we decided to call it a day. The way we traditionally return to the base is from King Con to Silverlode and then back down but a helpful French man on the lift told us we could take Erika’s Gold that would bypass the lines at Silverlode and shortcut to the base.

What this nice French man failed to note was that Erika’s Gold was an expert NIGHTMARE with steep, icy moguls. Literally, I had to peer over the edge just to see where the drop-off led, it was that steep. 

“I’m not doing this,” I announced to Jamie. “Let’s go back down and wait in the Silverlode line.”

My husband coaxed me to follow some people who were traversing across to another moguled run that didn’t look quite as steep. He lied. Instead of being a 90-degree slope, this one was 88 degrees. But we had passed the point of no return.

I tried to traverse across the slope as much as I could but it was so steep anytime I turned, I lost control.  My knee ached, and I freaked out about injuring it even more. And so I did what any woman trying to survive would do: I did the slide of shame and slid perpendicularly down the slope, which is two steps up from taking off your skis and walking down and only one step up from sliding down on your bum.

I have no shame.

I was fuming at Jamie for taking me down it but eventually made it down to a more reasonably pitched mogul run and we skied the rest of the way down. I officially announced my retirement from steep moguls.

Worst date ever. But I refuse to let that be a season-ender for me so I will go back.

Maybe I do have some shame after all.

 

Filed Under: skiing, Utah

Adventures at the Heber Valley Camp

March 2, 2018 By

It’s a busy weekend Chez Johnson. Bode just left on his first winter camp-out with a winter storm advisory in effect (pray for him) and Hadley has a volleyball tournament 1.5 hours away. This is the first time she is attempting to play since her accident so we’ll see how much she’s able to do. My twin nieces are getting baptized tomorrow and did I mention that big winter storm that is bearing down upon us? It should make for a crazy time.

All the Scouts are going to Heber Valley Camp this weekend. The LDS Church owns a smattering of camps throughout Utah and rents them out to the public in the off-season where it’s a madhouse trying to get a reservation. My brother-in-law Jeremy managed to score a one-night stay in one of the cabins and was generous enough to invite us along last year. I can’t believe I didn’t blog about it and just looking at the pictures makes me really sad because it was such an epic snow year. The rustic cabins and yurts aren’t heated but we sure had fun sledding, hiking and playing in the snow!

View from Heber Valley Camp of our little valley

The sledding races (we’re highly competitive)


I’ve been poking fun regarding how cold it will be this weekend but decided I’d better start getting Bode excited about the campout.

Me: “You know I’m just kidding about the cold, right? I’m sure you’ll have a blast this weekend!”

Him: “Do you mean a blast of heat?”

Me: “No, definitely not that.”

When I dropped him off at the church all the 11-year-old Scouts were loading up. Prior to departure, Bode was asked to say the prayer. Now, as a bit of background, Bode has always said THE BEST prayers. When he was younger, I kid you not–his nightmare prayers went on FOREVER–and even now when he’s blessing the food at dinner, he can sometimes ramble on a bit long (I mean, sometimes you just wanna eat). But you know in the book of Matthew when it admonishes against using vain repetitions? That is NOT Bode.

He gave a nice prayer for them to be safe and have a nice time but at the end, my friend Julie and I could barely contain our laughter as he prayed, “Please bless us to think twice before we do anything.”

I hereby vote THIS should be the new Scout motto.

 

Filed Under: Bode, Humor, outdoors, Utah