MidWeek Winter on the Road

After a good weekend of ridn, life at work and on the road takes over.  The road trip begins Tuesday morning and ends Saturday at noon; all of the ridn takes place on Thursday.

After a day and a half of sitting, eating, listening and talking non-stop, I awake on Thursday determined to get some blood pumping and air moving.  The decrepid stationary bike in the hotel basement serves the purpose.  An hour of intervals with short warm-up and cool down is all I can get in before having to do another half a day in the meeting rooms. 

After lunch I hit the road and travel north to the NY border and stop at the welcome center.  The NY Winter Recreation brouchure gives me the choices of where to go tonight for the second leg of my day of activity.  I use the GPS and look at the map of ski centers in Central and Western NY as I head west on 17.  I finally settle on Bristol as the destination and Penn Yan as the place to stay that would be central to both Bristol and Naples, my meeting place for Friday morning.

Bristol boosts the greatest vertical of all the ski centers between the Rockies and Adirondacks, and the 1200 feet provides good runs.  I realize I am spoiled rotten by Killington, so took what was offered and got the most out of it.  Plenty of snow base, but very little loose on top of hard pack machined snow.  The runs were pretty straight and wide, and the bumps were hard and close together.  I had fun finding the hilled up loose stuff along the sides and did a lot of runs right under the lift.  It seemed like the ride up was three times longer than the ride down.  The high speed lift had a long line until the last hour of my stay at around 8 pm.  I got a great workout and lots of fun.

My lack of attention to maintaining the edges and base of my LibTech Darkside board started to bite me hard, however.  I always have trouble with night riding.  The shadows hide bumps and depth perception is altered, so I hit the deck a few times right at the start.  After getting used to the lighting and getting warmed up, I started pushing the limits of my abilities, and as it turned out, my equipment.  On the last run I opted to cruise a longer run that I had only gone down once before.  On a long sweeping heel side curve my edge slipped out from under me at high speed and lean.  As a result I dropped hard onto my ass, back and head and somehow twisted my right knee in the process.  Combined with the earlier upendings, I now had aches and pains in my thumbs, wrists, knee, neck and ass.  All in a good night's work. 

The next morning I met Scott and we hit a couple of farms and then hooked up with Tim and Jim.  All of them complained how tired they were on Friday after having just sat for the 2 1/2 day meeting.  I told them I felt great -- and I did.  Despite the aches and pains, I felt invigorated by the day of activity and had more energy than they did as a result. 

At the end of my drive home on Saturday I stopped to see Jeff at Olde Saratoga Bike and Board and dropped off the snowboard to have him give it a much needed tune-up.  With my knee needing a rest and the board needing a tune, plus it being MLK Weekend, I will not be using it on Sunday.  Next week may be a similar deal with having to swing up to NNY and then over through VT.  No excuses with the board this time; Jeff assured me he knows how to properly tune the magne-traction edges.