1 month ago today....

Well today it has officially been a month since "the fall." Today I was greeted with a lovely 12 inches of fresh snow. Finally some new snow on top of all that crust! Since my mom's flight got canceled for a second time I elected to go skiing after work. At the shop the pickings were slim for skis so I was left with very few choices. I settled on the K2 Lotta Luv in a 149. I took the gondola up and decided to really face my fears and head down the trail I got hurt on on a nice powdery bump trail. What a great run, the skis performed beautifully, playful, responsive and really built my courage back up. I was able to cruise down through the bumps and also make nice strong turns. I will be putting my mom on them when she finally gets in to Jackson tonight! It was a wonderful day, I only did 2 runs, but after a painful day on Thursday and a fever and flu over the weekend I was very pleased.

Since I was sick over the weekend, I was a little hat making machine. Alex, one of the guys I work with at the shop, was impressed with my hats, so I told him that if he bought yarn I would gladly make him a hat. I finished on Saturday, and then later in the evening Kerry was complaining that I never made him hats anymore, so I felt compelled to whip another one out in about 3 hours. The pictures are below, both are designs I came up with from my own noggin, feel free to use them as inspriation, but I crochet as I go so there are no patterns.

Hat for Alex, he chose the color scheme and requested mountain ranges.

Hat for Kerry, he just handed me the blue yarn, which I ran out of, so I had to rip it out and add the orange designs.

Some photos...

Sunshine and a dusting of snow makes for a pretty morning walk....

A little love.

Lingering fog dancing in the sunshine.

Dusting.

Serene.

Bluebird.

Shadows.

Birch tree.

Not too much baseball happening.

A discouraging day

I awoke this morning, after a long night of vivid dreams, to a very cloudy and overcast morning, I laid there confused (since I had heard that we were going to have nothing but sunshine for the next week), then the weather report came on the radio (country of course since those are the ONLY stations we have here). The weather report said we were going to have another partly sunny day here in town, something certainly wasn't adding up. Eric, Sean, Kerry and I headed up to the hill despite the cloudy weather. After a stop in the rental shop, me to get skis, Kerry for snowboard boots and Sean and Eric for lift tickets, we headed up the hill. We got to the top of Apres Vous to realize we were having a classic Jackson inversion (cold and cloudy at the base and warm and sunny up top). After the funky weather we have been having though the snow on AV was bad (east coast crunch with quite a lot of death cookies). I took one run down and realized I either needed to find something better or just go home. The death cookies (imagine lots of little rocks of snow, lumpy and crunchy) caused a lot of vibration in my knee and caused intense pain. We headed up to Casper where it was more sunny for more of the runs. I did a few more runs, but instead of the ache I had been expierencing in my knee the past few days, there was intense searing pain. After 2 runs I went into the Casper lodge and sat on the couches by the fire, if I had had a book I think I would have hung out there all day. After a little break I elected to try again on my knee. The pain was still happening and I noticed my left ski was wavering more than I was comfortable with. I told the boys I needed to call the day before I did any damage to my knee. On my way down the trail we call the gully Kerry noticed a rainbow right on the cloud line. After stopping to admire the rainbow we noticed there was an awesome sundog. I dobut we would have seen either if I hadn't been going slow because of my knee. I am going to take a few days off of skiing and see how my knee feels, but I fear this is going to be an uphill battle between my brain and my body.

Sundog.

Ski day count 20 (already at 1/2 of last year).

Back at it

I made it through my first 2 days of skiing. The first day was on Tuesday, I went out with a big crew of friends from back home and also the rental shop. We lapped the bunny slope for a while and everyone went through the little terrian park that we were calling park-a-sorous. I took out our basic rental skis from the shop, the Rossingol Voodoo 74 in a 146. They were an interesting ski, certainly built back my confidence, they were light and easy to move around, but really didn't hold edges well. After a few laps on the bunny slope Sean, Eric and I went up to Apres Vous (the intermediate area). We did a few runs and then went in for lunch. On the bunny slope there was no pain at all, but it is also flat. The intermediate area caused my knee to be a bit achy, but nothing major. After lunch I took the gondola up. I got to the top though and had a moment of panic when I realized I had no idea how to get down since I had never paid any attention to the signs I didn't know what was rated blue and also was groomed. I ended up facing my fears and went on the trail I got hurt on. I really had no concept of how far I had gone on one leg. After working until 6:15 we went home and went to the WORT for bluegrass Tuesday.

First run on Tee-Wee.

Riding AV.

First real run with the brace, notice how huge my knee is.

Riding the rope tow!!

Top of the gondola.

Another Tuesday at the Wort (great expressions here).

The engineers.

PBR.

Wednesday I worked from 7:45 until 2 so I elected to take the day off from skiing. Our boss in the rental shop told us that at the top of the Tram (the highest point at Jackson ~10000ft) in the cabin they serve waffles and that with our employee pass it is only 2.50 (a bargin for food at the resort). Alex, Jacki and Kerry and I all rode up the tram to get waffles. We got there at 2:35 only to find out that they turn off the waffle irons at 2:30, but because we were so excited they turned them back on for us. The clerk asked us all how we wanted to pay, and I guess he must have assumed we were 2 couples because he asked if we wanted to pay couple by couple, we laughed and all said "no singles..." Alex, Kerry and I got Nutella on ours and Jacki got brown sugar buteer. They slightly overcooked Kerry's so we got one for free with strawberry presevers and whipped cream. It was a good time with awesome friends. Afterward the rest skiied down and I took the tram down.

Our new 100 person tram.

Today was day 2 post MCL. Kerry and Jacki were trying out snowboarding so I hung out on the bunny slope for a few runs. Jacki was snowboarding for the first time ever and Kerry for the first time in 6 years. Somehow, despite the fact that I was on skis I managed to give Jacki some of my limited snowboarding advice even though I haven't snowboarded in 2 years and have gone a total of 8 times. She did really well, especially after AJ gave her a mini-lesson. After a few runs I went up to Apres Vous and did a few blue runs, my knee felt really good and my biggest complaint of the day was that my ears were cold. After the other day on the performance skis from the shop (Rossignol Voodo 74's) I decided to take out some demos (Rossingol Scratch BC Girl). The Scratch BC were so much more responsive and lively. When I first rented them out I noticed that the edge was compressed in, which seemed like a big problem, but the guys in the repair shop told me to give it a try and just to keep the damaged ski on my non-injured leg. They also told me to bring them back in if they felt funny, but they felt great. I managed do 12 min laps of Apres Vous lift (liftline to liftline) which is pretty respectable (pre-injury record was 10 mins). My knee is feeling really good. Tonight Caroline, Melanie and Els (they all stayed at our house for 2 weeks while they were homeless) came over and made us all dinner. It was great. Now we are down to 5 in our house, Kerry, Mike and me and then Sean and Eric (friends from UVM). It is much quieter these days.

Ski count at 19.

Some random other photos....

Monday night at the Caddy.

Sean and Kerry riding geese ($24,000 geese).

$42,000 cowboy, now we have to ask why these are sitting outside.....

1st ski day tomorrow!!!

Well tomorrow is the big day! My first day back on skis since my MCL tear. I am feeling pretty excited, but also very nervous. I am borrowing a pair of skis from work in a 146. They are our very classy performance skis (ie. the cheapest skis we have). A bunch of people from work are going to come out and do a few laps with me. We will see how it goes..... fingers crossed!.

I am still alive

Well family and friends I am still alive despite my disappearance on my blog posting. On Dec 30th I went to a wonderful orthopedic practice here in Jackson called Teton Orthopedics and they have been nothing but wonderful. Turns out I only have a partial tear of my MCL (learn more about knee ligaments here) which means that I will recover very quickly. As far as knee injuries go the MCL is a good one (looking on the positive side here, haha) because unlike the ACL it has its own blood supply and can repair on its own without surgery. This means that on January 13th I am clear to try skiing again. Although, the first day I will only be on the bunny slope, it will be nice to be out there again. The really nice part is that everyone at work is super supportive and they are all going to come out there with me and support me. I really enjoy the people I work with and they have been nothing but amazing. Today I went back to my doctor to get fitted with a new brace because I realized on Thursday that my brace had gotten really big since my knee is no longer so swollen so the brace wasn't supporting at all. My brace was also too long and was down into my ski boot which simply wouldn't do. They were really nice about it and just traded out my brace for a new smaller size. Here is the brace I have been wearing, it is meant for the most support in the highest impact situations. I guess it ought to be since it is a $700 brace.

All braced up and ready to go.

So this brace I have the joy of wearing 24/7 until the end of January, then for the month of February I will wear it any time I am out of bed, for March any time I leave the house, and beyond April any time I am doing any type of weight bearing sports until December 30th 2009.

I am really looking forward to Tuesday though, especially since all of my roommates (Kerry, Mike, Caroline and Melanie) all went skiing today. It sucked to see them all leaving, but it has been nice to have some time to bum around the house and do some napping which I am in desperate need of. Soon Caroline, Melanie and Els (our other house guest) will be moving into their apartment and we will go back to having just three of us here in the house, that is until the next visitors arrive, haha. I guess that is the plague of living in a ski town. Over the past week there have also been a bunch of UVM folks in town because the annual UVM Ski and Snowboard trip was here. Some of my friends were in town so I spent a fair amount of time visiting with them. Tomorrow I am thinking about driving to Idaho Falls, ID which is about 2 hours away. Idaho Falls is the nearest city that has normal chain stores and the like. Here in Jackson we only have one store that sells yarn and they run about $8 for a small ball of yarn, so being poor we have to drive to Idaho to buy some yarn we can afford, thank god gas is only $1.61. Well that is all for now, I will try and do a better job keeping this updated, but my apologies I tend to slack on this.

Epic Day!

Well today was one for the Jackson record books. In 12 hours we got 25 inches of snow and we were under the 3rd ever EXTREME avalanche danger (in all the year of assessing the danger only the 3rd time!) We (Mike, Kerry, AJ, Brandon and Erik) all got up at 5:45 so we could open presents together and then have a big family breakfast before we went skiing. By 7 we were sitting down to a great breakfast which included egg scramble, bacon, sausage, fruit, pancakes and of course mimosas!

The rubble after opening presents!

AJ and Eric cooking up some tasty food.

It's all in the presentation!

Brandon and Kerry pretty excited!

Kerry's car is now entombed in snow.

We left the house and headed to the mountain, by 8:45 we were in line for the gondola. There were tons of avalanche blasts and ski patrol was working as hard as they could, but it took until 12:50 for them to finally get the terrian off the gondola safe to open. Because the snow was coming down so fast and so much it was very prone to sliding so they had to be really cautious on what they opened. When we finally got up it was more snow than I have ever seen! I started skiing and it was about halfway up my chest which made it very hard to keep moving. The snow was so light though we all kept choking on it as it sprayed up in our faces. During our second run we happened to be at the right place at the right time and got first tracks on a trail that was just being opened. By our third run there were a lot of soft bumps and when I was about 3/4 of the way down the trail my ski tip buryed into one and I fell and did, from what I understand from the man who saw it, quite a big tumble. During the tumble I had the pleasure of a full chiropractic adjustment couresty of the Gros Ventre trail. As I layed there I wasn't sure if I should even move because my back was in a lot of pain. A nice man came down and took off my other ski and stood there while I decided if I needed help. I told him after a minute or so I was okay. Then I stood up and realized I was entirely not okay. I couldn't put any weight on my left leg. Somehow by a miracle I skied down on my one good leg. I got down to the bottom where Kerry, Mike and Erik were waiting and started bawling. I hobbled to the locker room, got changed and then decided I did really need to go to the clinic. Turns out I may have ripped my MCL in half. I will need to get it checked out by and orthapaedic and probably get an MRI. Let the fun times begin. I am trying to stay really positive and optimistic about it though. We will see how it all goes and I will try and keep you all posted as I know more! Merry Christmas everyone!

All of us waiting for the gondola to open!