Saturday night was the annual Mt. Hood Ski Patrol awards banquet. I hadn't "suited up" in a while, and Bex hooked me up with a sweet new red tie to go with the white shirt and dark pinstripe suit. I was feeling pretty dapper, and ready to go hang out and have a nice evening with my fellow patrollers.

Bruce Campbell's voice rumbled from the Sorento's speakers as I pulled into a parking space in front of the patrol building in Government Camp this morning. I had forgotten all about the audiobook for "Make Love! The Bruce Campbell Way", until recently, so I'd put it on my iPhone earlier in the week, listening to chun

Sunday was all kinds of cool for me. It was my first trip to Mt. Bachelor, for starters. I know what you're thinking... (Actually, I kind of dislike that phrase. Quite impossible, I'd have to imagine, to know that. Let's try again.)I can guess what you might be thinking.

One year ago today, I started the long road back to skiing. A month before that, I had destroyed my left knee quite handily in a stupid little crash on the way out to check out Scotty's Way (AKA East Wall) at Ski Bowl. I won't go over the whole thing again - if you want to read that story,

I guess I should call it "we patrol", since there were 3 of us. But that sounds kind of odd. Anyway, I'm finally getting around to blogging about last Friday. My blogslackery knows...uh...well, SOME bounds. I guess.After looking at the week's forecast after Ski Day 22, I

This past weekend was another one of those skiing weekends where I skied both days and the experience on each day was completely different. I kind of like those - because different is interesting and interesting is good - but when you start out with the sunny bluebird day, you don't want the second day to be different

Yeah, it snowed at Meadows today. Quite a bit. And it was windy. Quite a bit windy. I had figured on having to go it alone coaching the apprentices today, but was pleasantly surprised to find a coach who happened to be patrolling up there willing to help me out. That was cool.It was Andrew, who not only co

Hey, look - I didn't wait almost a week (or longer) to get around to blogging about a patrol day. I'm proud of myself, but not to the point that I'll be testing my flexibility by patting myself on the back.Or did I just do that?Whatever. Anyway, Sunday was another day of apprentice coaching for

Sunday found me in a familiar place, not surprisingly - Mt. Hood Ski Bowl. Other than having to 'fly solo' as a toboggan coach for the patrol, there was really only one thing noteworthy about Sunday.It had been just one day shy of a year since I blew out my left knee up there at that very ski area.

Another bout of blogslackeritis has brought about a dry spell here, and also what could be a massive missive, if I were to write as much as I could about basically all of February from a skiing/patrolling standpoint.But I won't.Feb 6th was my avalanche refresher course, and I certainly was plea

Considering that Day 11 was weeks ago, you may commence with the "slacker" comments. :)Day 11 was back on January 10th, and was the first day of coaching for me for ski patrol. I'd met some of the team at tryouts, but not all, so it was nice to meet the gang and get to know the patrol candidates that I'll

This one's going to be a little light on the details, since Day 7 was 11 days ago, and day 8 was 4 days ago. Day 9 was just the day before yesterday, though. Hey, I'm on vacation, what do you want from me? :)Dec 20th was ski day #7 for me this season, and it was one of those days that used to typify patrol

My original plan for today was to ski all day at either Meadows or Ski Bowl. I'd have been flying solo, and while I don't mind doing it, I prefer to ski with people. So it was probably just as well that I stayed up way too late Tuesday night playing TF2 and woke up all kinds of late today, or I might not have had the

This weekend was shaping up - in my mind, at least - to be a pretty easy weekend of skiing. The coaches' calibration/clinic for the ski patrol was Saturday, and today was patrol tryouts. I figured Saturday to be a day where I'd just ski a little bit, demonstrate a skill or two here or there, and that was it. Sunday, I

So it took a stranger to send me a message on Facebook to remind me about this marginally interesting collection of ones and zeroes here on the ol' Interwebs, but here we go.Ski season started for me last Saturday the 14th. Given how long I've been a skier, this isn't really news outside of a couple things

I couldn't let all that snow go un-measured for depth. Here's how it stacks up:Deepest drift: 33" (at east edge of driveway)Deepest pile: 38" (shoveled from driveway)Depth on street: 13" (near mailbox)Big drift in back yard: 22" (east side of yard)Depth west side of house: 29"