The other night, as we sat on the porch watching the sun set into the foothills, Bix announced that he had itchy feet.
“Well,” I told him, “We finally have insurance. Maybe you should get that checked out.” Continue reading “Spring fever”
Category: Transitions
Mom knows best
A few weekends ago, I skied with my mom. We made the traditional bagel stop before hitting the highway, drove up and over Berthoud Pass, and parked at the base of Mary Jane. Eventually, I would demand we break for a giant brownie at the lodge. Everything was exactly like when I was a kid. Continue reading “Mom knows best”
Kicking the Seasonal Avoidance Disorder habit: How I learned to love my favorite places all year long
We rented bikes and took the lifts to the top, from whence we careened back down the mountain on trails hidden all winter by feet of snow. The runs I’d skied so many times looked different, shed of their cold-weather clothing, but not at all unpleasant. It had never occurred to me that there was more to this place than the way I saw it between December and March, that there were nearly 2,500 acres of unexplored terrain beneath the mountain’s annual 300” of snowfall. It had never occurred to me that Copper Mountain had layers.
I grew up skiing at Copper Mountain, a resort at the edge of I-70 just shy of Vail Pass. I skied there dozens of times every winter in college, and I could’ve recited the runs accessed by each lift from memory or told you exactly how to get from Super Bee to Spaulding Bowl and back again. I knew when, on any given lift, to look for the tree adorned with Mardi Gras beads and discarded bras—that ski area staple—and that I had precisely four-and-a-half minutes to choke down the disfigured peanut butter sandwich in my pocket before the American Flyer quad deposited me at the top of my favorite run.
I thought I knew Copper Mountain pretty well. Continue reading “Kicking the Seasonal Avoidance Disorder habit: How I learned to love my favorite places all year long”
From the archives: On Couples’ Yoga
From the archives: This Valentine’s Day, I will be in Moab, running an excruciatingly long race with my perma-Valentine (more on that next week). I anticipate a romantic dinner at Milt’s, where Bix will find it endearing when I finish my double bacon cheeseburger and start in on his onion rings, and not just because he is now legally bound to think everything I do is cute. In any case, in my absence, here’s a throwback to one of my less fun (but ultimately more memorable!) Ghosts of V-Days Past.
Continue reading “From the archives: On Couples’ Yoga”
2015: My Search for the Endless Winter
It was just after seven o’clock on what was shaping up to be an unseasonably warm, sunny, late September morning, and I sat perched on a rock outcrop at the top of St. Mary’s Glacier, about a thousand feet above the little hamlet of Alice, Colorado. I rifled fruitlessly through my pack, hoping to find something more appetizing than an ancient, misshapen Clif bar.
Bix, long since resigned to going along with any number of harebrained schemes, fiddled with a half-empty Nalgene bottle, perhaps in an attempt to avoid making eye contact with the slope below us.
“And you’re sure this is a good idea?” he asked hesitantly, though he already knew the answer. Continue reading “2015: My Search for the Endless Winter”
my alaskan odyssey 