Well, ski season has started and as anyone who has even been on this blog once knows, that is my favorite time of the year.

Over the past few seasons, I have really changed how I ski.  First I was learning.  Then it was mastery of different levels of trail.  Now I set goals for myself at the beginning of each season.  How many runs, how many times and how well I hope to do all of this.  I tend to stick to one side of the resort, so there are fewer pictures taken, but by this point, I’ve been to all of these places a multitude of times.

This ski season has been really interesting.  Well, some new people have entered my life as a result.  I found myself a guy to drive me at 5am for my ski bus, this incredibly crusty guy from Bawstan, I mean Boston who has the thickest Boston accent I have ever heard.  But he’s good guy who is always early to get me and delivers me on time and with no drama.  I’ve also started to ask friends to drop me off at the place we take the bus from.  A new friend named Liz was tasked with this last weekend and it all worked out with the ride.  She came to get me, we chatted and off I went.  Last year I asked two friends to drop me off and it went off fine.  Did these people get to a new friendship level with me??  Possibly.  Nah, I love them.  Ten years in a place, right?

Well and then there’s the actual skiing.  My first big skiing trip this season was to Sunday River, which was a good day but really tiring.  But the best kind of tired is skiing tired.  Then two hilarious trips to Killington.  The first one was on the biggest ski day of the year with approximately and I can’t get too exact, 11 million of my closest friends.  I have never seen that many people on a mountain anywhere, ever.  The lift line at the bottom of the Killington base was super crowded and it took a half an hour to get anywhere.  The mountain was FULL of people.  I hate to sound like a snob but one day a year ski people, not us crazy people who sleep with our skis by our beds and joyously run outside at 4am to go skiing.  Just vacation skiers or as a local in Killington calls them — Jerrys.  A Jerry is ski parlance for an individual who cannot ski well.

But it was still a fun day.  Because any day on the mountain is a good day.  The conversations on the lifts are the absolute best, especially since this man appeared on my ski helmet:

If you don’t know, this is Nick Offerman playing a wonderful character named Ron Swanson, on the exceptional Parks and Recreation.  Ron is a very conventional man who likes wood working, breakfast food and dark haired women.  This above though, is when Ron lost his mind and re-married his second ex-wife, Tammy 2.  Within 24 hours of remarrying, he’s got the corn rows and the kimono.  It is one of the funniest transformations ever to be put on screen.  At one point during the hours of crazy, Corn Rows Ron watches a videotape of regular Ron, where regular Ron warns him about the dangers of getting involved with Tammy 2.

I’m a member of multiple Parks and Recreation groups on Facebook and one day I saw that some website was selling stickers of him in this great moment.  I got three.  One for my fridge, one for my mirror and of course, one for the ski helmet.  Ron is there to remind me to be a little bit evil everyday.

So three young men on the lift were passing a flask of bourbon between them and joking about stuff.  At one point, they asked if I wanted a swig from their flask.  God, I love skiing!!!!!  Well, since the only was down was a black diamond with a rope over it that said — experts only, I didn’t partake.  But we did get into a conversation about the Ron sticker and by the time we were at the top, a lot of laughter had passed between us about Parks and Recreation and the sticker.  Give me all of your bacon and eggs!!!!!!

The next weekend I decided to return to Killington.  This time it was 11 million of my closest friends and fog.  A lot of fog.  A LOT OF FOG.  How much fog?  Well, at one point I took my goggles off and all I saw was white.  I could not see the horizon or the person in front of me.  It was as close as I ever come to actually being blind in my life.  So I decided that day to go down an icy trail called Panic Button.  It should be renamed “Get Your Head Examined.”  I got on it.  I can’t really see well.  All I thought was — let the people in front of you go and keep your eyes on the horizon.  And we were fine obviously, but when I starting going down, I thought — honey, you in danger now.  Skiing — you got yourself into this mess and you have to get yourself out of it now.

And of course there was fun lift conversation.  On the same ski lift where I encountered the boys with the flask of bourbon the week before, this time I was riding the lift up with a guy whose been skiing for farty years.  I don’t know how to write it but that’s what it sounds like to me.  Farty years this guy has been skiing.  Then another guy on the lift started talking about how Baywatch had been digitally remastered and it was hilarious to watch.  I said that they use phones that are the sizes of paperbacks and the TV screens are huge.  The Farty guy goes — I had a phone in my caaaaaah and a beepaaaaah.  And now his ex-wife has the numbaaaaaah from his caaaaaah phone.  I think I was laughing about this conversation for at least an hour afterwards.

The skiing was, um, interesting that day.  It was ice skiing and some moguls.  Moguls in fog.  None of this bodes particularly well, but it was all right.  Gotta be ready for everything.  Get the practice in with those turns for days like that.

Last Sunday’s ski trip was the calmest and most beautiful not just of this season, but of all my seasons chasing the dragon, I mean skiing.  Every year since I started going skiing, I sign up to go to Bretton Woods and every year the Patriots are in the Super Bowl, so the trip gets cancelled.  Now don’t get me wrong.  I love the team but you can go skiing and then watch the Super Bowl.  But the trip always got cancelled.  Well, this year this team didn’t make it.  Look, we have to give other people the chance to win.  BURN.  Nah, well, better luck next year.  Anyway, so the ski club finally did go to Bretton Woods and the views, were, kind of unbelievable.

Bretton Woods is the home of a very famous hotel were an agreement about the post war monetary system was signed and where two nights costs the same amount as my rent for my old apartment in Allston, Chez Kelton.  Next to the hotel is a ski area also called Bretton Woods.  As I always update Facebook to let my parents know that I have arrived at my ski destination, my aunt saw my post and wondered what I was doing wandering in some kind of a forrest.  I was wandering that forrest with my skis, thank you very much.

What a glorious day it was.  Weather was perfect.  The runs were magnificent and the views, well, those below.  Words just won’t do them justice.

Now to the photography.  You’ve been patient.  There will be photographs in a second: