I didn’t die… March 9, 2008
but I’m feeling like I might! Damn head colds. Right now my sinuses are staging a coup, and I’m afraid the rest of me is losing the battle. For the record, I would like to be cremated. And I better not find my ashes on anyone’s mantle.
The week was actually pretty good, I wasn’t in hiding, I just fell asleep early, a lot. I’ve stabilized my weight at 188, down from 10 at the beginning of the week. So that’s good. My calories were mostly in range, and I managed to get some exercise in. (Not enough, but we’re making some progress) This weekend things got sketchy.
On Friday, I went out to lunch with some coworkers after a brutal meeting. We went out to Italian, and I had a calamari parmesan sandwich. But, I only ate half, and had a salad instead of fries. Dinner, or lack thereof, not so good. Unless, of course, liquid dinners are good. 2 screwdrivers, an appletini, and a rum and coke, with about 5 nachos. Oops! Overall, not a good calorie day.
Saturday was a really good day. I went skiing. For the record, I started skiing as soon as I could walk, but quit nine years ago when I started snowboarding. So, yesterday was my first day skiing in nine years. Some of you are wondering “why are you going backwards? What happened to snowboarding? Well, I finally faced the music. Despite the fact that I COULD snowboard, I couldn’t bring myself to enjoy it. I was still so scared of falling and gettign hurt that I couldn’t give it my all. And scared with good reason. Falling on a snowboard gives you a 50/50 chance of falling on your lower back, where my major injury is. It was relatively fun, but I was taking it so slowly that I would never have been able to keep up with any of my friends, etc. So, when my coworker brought her niece up to ski, and wanted someone to go with her, I went for it.
Can I just say it was probably the most fun I’ve had in a long time? Luckily, it seems to be like riding a bike, and it all came back to me very naturally. I even managed to stay on my feet all day (which is one of the reasons that I switched back to skiing, it’s easier to prevent a fall than with snowboarding) Granted, I’m not as good as I used to be (I was that crazy ten year old kid zipping by on expert runs) but, I was good enough. And it was fun. Not without adventure though, and I totally blame my coworkers niece.
Let me explain. Reason number one it’s all her fault: in the mornign while we’re riding the bunny hill lift, she says she’d liek to see someone ride the chair lift going down the mountain instead of up it (Can you see where this is going?) Reason number two, when we’re taking our first blue run of the day (beginner is green circle, intermediate is blue square, advanced is black diamond, expert is double black diamond, skull and crossbones… well… you get it.) Anyways, while we’re going down our first blue she decides she wants to go through some trees. Sure, cool! So we get through and are now in the position where we ahve to get on a different lift to get back to where we were. So I see the sign next to the lift that says to take thsi run back to the lodge we were at. Sweet. So we get on. And on, and on. I start to realize that we’re probably going to the wrong place when I notice that the top of the lift is buried in clouds. We get closer to the top and I realize we’re really at the top with the snow blowing across the peaks and all. Not good. We get off and I realize we’re at the top of Mount Everest, there’s empty O2 bottles everywhere, frozen bodies stickign out of the snow, and evey run is advanced or better. Crap. Well, what are you going to do now? SO we start heading towards our run along this long flat trail. So as we’re pole-ing our way along we pass all these signs saying “Danger, cliff area” “Area closed to skiing” “Access at your own risk” “You or your heirs are responsible for any rescue costs, rescue may not be possible”. Yeah. little scary. But, some runs are only black diamond because they’re ungroomed or deep powder, so I figure, maybe worth a shot. We get there and its a deathtrap- straight down the mountain. But, theres a smooth, flat trail wrapping around the side. So we take that. Until about 100 feet down when we see a sign that says “not a ski trail” Crap. Well it turns out that particular section of trail is only flat when you’re nto walking up it, carryign two sets of skis, and then all the way back to the lift. I felt like a tool, but, yeah, we rode the lift back down. Other than that, the day was great. That and my awkward forehead sunburn.
Not only that, but I got home and gathered DH and Lucy and took a walk through the frozen marsh that uh, wasn’t frozen enough. Should have been a snowshoe adventure. But, nonetheless, I cranked up my exercise! So, food not so good, but exercise is a vast improvement.
If I live through this head cold.. I have every intention of kicking ass this week…
