Skiing!!

Gib and I left with the scout troop on Friday night at 6pm. I was driving one of the 12 passenger vans and we were heading for Boone, North Carolina. We arrived at our lodging, Boone United Methodist Church, a little after 2am. We got our gear all situated and hit the hay by 3am, we were only going to get about 3 hours of sleep, we lost an hour due to time change.

The wake up call came quickly. We assembly lined a lunch making table and everyone prepared their own lunch for the day and then we headed out to McD's for breakfast. One of the adults stood outside the door and handed each person a $5 bill as they went in the door. With that completed we headed up for Sugar Mountain.

Saturday turned out to be the busiest day of the season there and it took us 2 - 3 hours to get our lift tickets and rental gear. Gib decided to go with a snowboard instead of ski's, this is his first time skiing. All the first timers were enrolled in a group lesson. The lesson was essentially worthless, they allowed too many skiers in the same time and basically told them how to do a few things and were told to go practice.

I headed up the lifts for two runs while Gib did the lesson. On my second run down I headed over to the "Easy Street" slope to find Gib. As I get toward the bottom, I see him in a lift line with another scout, so I join them. I am assuming that this is the "Easy Street" lift and that he has been on it previously. So as Gib an I approach the head of the line, Gib turns to me and asks how to get on the lift, he hasn't done it yet. Ok, no problem, I can help with this. So, on we go. Now we find the real surprise, this lift is not "Easy Street", but is one of the lifts that goes all the way to the top of the mountain. Needless to say, we have no choice now.

What would take me 10 minutes to ski down took Gib and I almost 2 hours. There was a blue square path all the way down the hill, but still was a little too much for Gib. He struggled all the way down, got frustrated, and was near ready to just quit. When we finally got to the bottom, we did our lunch thing and then headed over to the correct "Easy Street" lift. The afternoon was much kinder to Gib, he actually had learned a good deal on that torturous trip down the mountain. He was now comfortable with snowboard and could do some basics and the slope was more his speed. The lines were so long, We only got two more runs in that day.

The next morning, I spent skiing with another adult who was closer to my skill level and Gib worked all the green circle runs with some other scouts. I hooked up with Gib at lunch and skiied with him and his buddies for a couple hours. Gib was having a great time this second day and is now in favor of another trip next year.

We headed home on Monday. All in all it was a great trip for the boys and I enjoyed skiing again for the first time in fourteen years.