I want snow!

Another snow storm tracked south of us yesterday. This was after the one at the end of last week tracked north and east of us. The bottom line is that its nearing the end of January and we have no snow. Zero snow. Not enough to make a decent snowball. Oh sure we can travel for about three hours and find decent, not great,but decent snow, but the joy of getting up early to knock off a few kilometers on the way to work or stopping on the way home to ski is absolutely non existent. This no snow funk was made worse last night when I finally figured out the FaceTime app on my iPad. I was mildly amazed when the face of No1 son showed up on the screen and then as jealous as hell. I asked him why he was still at work at 8pm at night and he told me it was because Mt Hood got two feet of powder and he planned to be at Hood Meadows for first chair in the morning. He then kindly sent me the attached 7 day forecast for the area. 90 to 100% chance of snow for the next week. Avalanche warning, high winds, the classic snow dump. "Wow, that's great Erik....(grumble, fume, stew, bitch, whine)....have fun gliding through two feet of fresh pow-pow tomorrow. Let me know how it goes". Click. Stream of vile obscenities muttered under my breath.

I do plan on getting on the boards this Sunday. I will pack up the tele skis and my skate skis and head down to Welch Village, a local ski venue with lots of fake snow, and combine some gravity skiing with mindless skating back and forth at the base of the hill. Pathetic for January in Minnesota. There are other activities to occupy the time however, lesser activities that should be done in their proper seasons but ones that can be enjoyed in a pinch during this non winter. I actually found myself at a pool session, albeit with no boat last weekend. I sat in a clown shoe whitewater boat for the first time in years but was thinking about how I could have been outside skiing for most of the session.

Last Saturday we attended the Vasaloppet fund raiser dinner. It featured good food, plentiful beer, and a nice percentage of the SKOAC Renegade Relay team, who donated some money and in some cases got lucky. In the case of the BessemerConvivialist pretty damn lucky. The next day found JackiePack headed for some chlorine immersion at an ISK pool session and a few more of at the ski cabin on the north loops of the Vasaloppet trail. Even BjornDaehlieOfMahtomede, who had a half dozen pairs of skis in his car, did not attempt to ski the light dusting that was on the ground. Instead we celebrated that troika sanctioned and lumped together by our own Federal government; alcohol, tobacco, and firearms. A number of handguns were fired from .22 long rifle up to the decidedly non handgun caliber 7x30 Waters, with .357mag, .44mag, .45acp, and a couple .38 specials thrown in just for sport. Cuban cigars and then some fine ale were enjoyed, once all the hanguns were safely cased of course. We then headed south and the more masochistic among us gathered at Grumpys to watch the Packers choke, reminded once again that defense wins championships and that we did not have one.

I need to get my skates out and I hope to head down to Lake Nokimis for the annual pond hockey tournament this weekend to spectate. Maybe being out on the ice and getting a little skiing in will help me out of this brown winter funk. I think I may be suffering from the 180 opposite of SADS, UADS, the Unseasonal Affective Disorder Syndrome. I hope some artificial snow, like artificial sunlight for SADS, can alleviate my debilitating symptoms.