More Caffeine, Please: Dodgers...dodging...skiing...

Today I'm going to write about the Dodgers.

Well, kind of.

Actually, not really.

I'm going to relate them to something I would like to talk about -- my weekend. We went skiing in Vermont...with some friends of mine who used to live in L.A. [relation 1] They used to ski in Mammoth, but this weekend they skied in Vermont. With us. [relation 2] The mountain was pretty empty on Friday, but on Saturday it was crazy full, and we had to DODGE people all over the place. [relation 3] It was really sunny and warm this weekend, about 60 degrees, which is pretty much like L.A. [relation 4]

Relevance satisfied. Now for my story.

So we went to Vermont to ski. Brought the baby, left the big girl at home with her grandmother. This was our first time skiing since our honeymoon 10 years ago, and let's just say I'm not in nearly as good a shape as I was then. When we planned this trip, we knew that this had been a pretty warm winter, but typically March is a very snowy month in the Northeast, so we figured that between early February and mid-March, there would be a few wicked snowstorms.

We thought wrong.

There was a decent base, about 3 or 4 feet, but when it doesn't keep snowing and the weather is over 50 degrees, that base does not last long. So we participated in what skiers like to call "Spring Skiing", but I like to call "Suck".

Friday was okay, but my boot was all jacked up and by the time I took it off, I couldn't really touch my shin without yelping. I thought it would be fine by Saturday, but when I put the boot on and walked around the condo we had rented, I was kind of in tears. I sucked it up though and went outside. "Oh yeah, I can totally do this, I'm fine."

"Ski in, ski out" -- that was the whole point of staying there, right? Well, by the time I got over to the "ski out" portion, I could barely get my skis on because there was a crust on the snow that I could not penetrate. Turning was impossible, between the icy ground and the fact that whatever muscle/tendon thing is in the front of my shin had a huge lump on it and screamed with pain every time it touched my boot. I couldn't shift my weight forward; ergo, I could not ski. We paid $70 to ride the chair lift twice and take two icy crappy runs where I pretty much had to snowplow because I couldn't rotate my inside leg.

Lame. Literally and figuratively.

My remarkably considerate husband went to get the car so I didn't have to "ski in" back to the place we were staying...and because of the conditions he had to hike up the hill carrying his skis over the shoulder. He was a sweaty exhausted mess by the time he came to get me, so we just called it.

Now here's the good part - we showered and then went to a cute little Vermont town and bought whoopie pies and craft beers and THAT'S how we spent the rest of the sunny afternoon. And it was so warm we didn't even need our jackets.

That is what I like to call a "silver lining."

Also, through the magic of Facebook, a girl I knew in high school saw the picture I had posted during the weekend and commented, "Hey, is that Sugarbush behind you? Do you know I live two towns away?" So we stopped by her house on our way out of town and had a lovely afternoon visit -- I haven't seen her in 19 years. (MY GOD! That's like a whole PERSON!) Plus, she scored because I brought her all of the beers we hadn't finished. Win/win.

Essentially, I spent the entire weekend skiing a little, eating a lot (the aforementioned whoopie pies, fondue, cupcakes, bacon and eggs), drinking more beer than I've drank in the past year combined, and enjoying my dear friend's and my husband's company. Plus, on the way up we stopped at a place my husband saw on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives and I bought homemade Twinkies. They taste like regular Twinkies but minus the chemical aftertaste.

Turns out you don't even miss it.