Whooped in Winthrop

remember that scenario game? "the elevator stopped and he died, so what happened?" or "a car pulls up to a hotel and the driver instantly goes bankrupt, what happened?". well here's a new one for you: the power goes out and so a guy nordic skis his off for three days in paradise, explain?

i arrived home sunday night a bit weary from a long weekend at the nordic center, a bit tired from the skiing maybe too, and as i battle with the honda up the long drive through soft melting snow and step into the house i notice the lights don't work. shit, no power.... again! it took a few moments, maybe just fractions of moments, but the verdict is swift: you must leave, go somewhere else, snow... methow! i had lots to do. load the tortuga with all gear that potentially could be used. food had to be requisitioned. clothing dug from dryers and dirty clothes hampers to aid in the mission. but most importantly to ensure success, the Tortuga had to be extracted from 2 weeks of dumps and a long soft and slippery driveway on baldish tires. i had just a few doubts.

could have tried to halfass it first by doing some quick shoveling, but decided to go straight to the gimp: unleashed the snowblower and spent the 40-minutes to suck up very wet snow (or was it very thick rain, hard to tell) because i wanted it done right the first time. a stuck RV is a sunk RV. the moment of truth came after i'd warmed her up a bit, then gave her the first blast of gas to the cylindars... with a heave and a groan she broke free from her icy mooring, and dispite all cylindars firing it wasn't enough. the angle of the drive caused her to slide sideways and her hind quarters got hung up on the 3 foot bank of snow. gently i coaxed her backwards, forwards, backwards until her hips were clear of obstruction, then once free i gassed her again and the "duelie" rear tires gave the extra rubber-to-snow contact we needed, and once up to speed there was no stopping her... nor me, until we burst free of mush and onto the county maintained roadway. freedom!

and thats just the short of it!

now here i am in the methow with no talk of peril nor near disasters but rather perfection of nature and the human form, artistic genius of the physical kind. or at least thats how it felt, for skate skiing on perfect snow with perfect weather and a perfect kind of song in the air helps create perfection.

i skied 2 hours on waxable classics in the morning, then napped, fed and coffeed up before hitting another 2-hour session in the afternoon. wow! i could go into the beautiful details, but for those of you who haven't skied then you couldn't or wouldn't understand, and for those of you who do know, then your imaginations are just as good: the perfect day on skis is easy to imagine to those who have been there. yes, i shall elaborate. in due time, grasshopper, in time.