This one is one of the more interesting ones I’ve gotten:

A snow day. Heaven for kids. Hell for adults. Thanks for coming Juno. Now leave.
But not before we celebrate your arrival with some photos:

Words can only do harm:

Ski season is this special time of year when I go into the mountains to explore. Of course I am exploring new places on the skis, but mostly, it is internal. When I get on the mountain, I am usually in some kind of crazy state over some argument or slight that happened earlier that same week. I go up to the mountain to work it out.

I still really concentrate a lot when I ski and that concentration helps drive the other thoughts out of my head. Who cares about the fight I had with my boss? I have to get to the bottom of this mountain.

To be completely honest, my motivation to ski to the maximum isn’t there every weekend. I love everything about skiing including getting up at 3:45am to leave. That’s insane, but true. But I don’t always want to go down every black trail and do every perfect turn. Some weekends I take it easy. But those are good too.

On Monday I went to Loon Mountain in New Hampshire, which has the best blue trails I have ever skied on. They are challenging but wide and imminently skiable. I always do some black but the blues over there are great places to do turns and go fast. Writing this is making me want to ski right now.

Of course there are photos. I had to stop to take all of these so when I would, I would hear this whoosh of wind going on and then total silence. I was standing still, so no crunch of the snow beneath my skis. Just silence. It was magnificent.

Enjoy the silence:

Nobody owns these views:

My weekends are pretty exciting. I visit glamorous places like mountains, mansions and watch all sorts of sporting events.

On Saturday I visited Springfield, Massachusetts following my usual weekend theme of visiting glamorous places. No, it isn’t the Springfield from the Simpsons, but it is home to my beloved Basketball Hall of Fame and a kind of a rust belt town like Worcester or Albany, New York. I’ve very much been intrigued by those towns, all beautiful and done up, but sort of sad now.

Springfield seems to have a lot going for it and my friend who I visited who lives there told me they are trying to revive the place now, which is great. Because it has all sort of lovely things in it:

Reggie Miller.  Arvydas Sabonis.  Patrick Ewing.  Bird, Magic, Meadowlark.  All well known names in the game of basketball.  And all characters in their own right.  Gentle giants.  Master showmen.
These are the guys that attracted me to the game of basketball.  Of course, it is a fun, fast paced sport, but also a game full of colorful characters.  The ESPN 30 for 30 on Reggie Miller, I’ve watched that about 50+ times.  When Patrick Ewing looks into the camera and says “I hated Reggie Miller,” my heart is warmed.  They are human.  They love.  They fight.And then a guy like Arvydas Sabonis.  A fabulous big man who was in the clever words of the great Jack McCullum “a basketball Sasquatch.”  He would emerged from behind the Iron Curtain to mess with some forwards and confuse them with his mad playing skills and then disappear.  But that was just half the story.  Sabonis was skilled enough to play against the best in the NBA (and probably beat them) in his prime, but politics got in the way and he stayed behind the Iron Curtain until his playing days were getting fewer and fewer.  These are the great stories.  These make me love the game of basketball and made me make a special visit to the James Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts.  The inside of the place is just gorgeous and they pay tribute to the greats of game.

Firstup, my two favorite inductees that star in one of my favorite movies of all time, The Other Dream Team:

Next up, the hall itself:

One insane championship ring:

Outside:

Some really great vintage basketball outfits:

And finally, we can’t talk about basketball without this guy:

 

 

 

 

 

I live in New England.  I go skiing.  I go to the peaks of mountains in the dead of winter.  I know cold, but the cold I experienced at Jay Peak last Saturday defined all of my possible definitions of cold.  It was CRAZY COLD.  The type of cold that punched you in the face.

I’ve been to Jay Peak before but I had only skied in the lower part of the mountain because I was a beginner.  I never even took the tram up or anything.  This time I saw the whole thing.  And it was magnificent.  Yeah I was cold, but there is something about being on the top of a mountain that makes you feel like an arctic explorer.  It was amazing.

Of course, there are photos:

Sorry:

There is just something about South Florida that adds that extra bit of glamour to everything: