1/10/08

Day 20

Conditions: Icy base with light snow on top
Location: Boyne Mountain, MI

While we were off in Colorado, things got pretty warm here in Michigan. And warn weather means that things melt and turn into ice when it gets cold again. So, we weren’t expecting much when we returned to our home mountain of Boyne this weekend.

In the ski world, home mountains are not nostalgic, fun places that riders look forward to visiting. They are a last resort, with more annoyances than benefits. At times, visiting them is like punching a time clock.

One thing we do look forward to at Boyne is seeing our lift buddy, Duane. Duane is one of those people who have a pretty crappy job, but for some crazy reason seems to love it. He always has a smile on his face. Sure, he puts Christian propaganda on his little white board, but we can overlook that. When we saw Duane, he hinted that he was gone the entire time we were gone. When Dirk asked him why, he told us it was a long story. A lady on the chairlift informed us that Duane had a heart attach, and this was his first day back. It was nice to see him back, but it was a real bummer to hear.

The groomed runs were decent, so we tool several runs then headed back to the woods. Because of the temperature fluctuations, the woods were blanked by a bumpy sheet of ice, covered by a small dusting of snow. In other words, they were dangerous. We tried a few of our favorite spots, and found most of them were sketchy.

To waste time, we went in for lunch. We ate our sandwiches in the cafeteria, right next to a birthday party with six little girls. The mom had purchased “princess jewelry” for all the girls to wear. The actual birthday girl got pissed that all the other girls got presents on her birthday and refused to put her princess jewelry on. It was incredible how cattiness is so genetically programmed into women.

After lunch, we headed to Superbowl in search of decent snow. Just to cross over there, we had to go through three different race courses (and there were two more set up on Superbowl). Basically, racers were monopolizing the hill that we were paying $59 each to ride on. It was one of the many things that Boyne gets wrong every year.

Superbowl was no better; if anything, it had more ice than the other hills. We packed it in for the day.

Highlights:

- Fallen Tree run had some decent snow.
- Duane survived the heart attack.

Lowlights:

- The conditions and the mountain. After mile-long runs in Colorado, the runs seemed incredibly short and flat. We drive three hours to Boyne. If we lived in Seattle, we would be driving three hours to Whistler, B.C.

Après Ski:

We had a brilliant idea to change up our dinner plans and drive past out normal dinner place to visit a bar near the mountain. We eat lunch at this bar every Sunday, and the food is great. We didn’t count on the fact that dozens and dozens of parents would be getting wasted in that bar while their kids were out night skiing. There was not place to sit or stand in the entire bar, so we had to drive back to the Red Mesa, our normal dinner spot. We slept at Camp Hobeywood and ended up going home the next morning. $59 was just too much to pay for two hours scraping ice.

Days to go: 30