So, after about a year hiatus from self publishing I am back.  If you stumbled across this and are wondering "who's back?" then a short introduction may help you.

I am a mid-thirties male currently living in South Central Idaho.  It's very much like South Central Los Angeles other than instead of urban scenery we have cows.  Lots of cows.

My biggest passions right now and most likely the subject of most of the posts that follow are my family, snow skiing, whitewater, literature, coffee, and whatever else strikes me.

Mostly I want to begin creating an online diary of my home roasted coffee and ski days to have a record to review this spring, so let's dive right in...

Today was my fourth ski day.  The first was at Sun Valley's Baldy mountain.  My wife and took the bus over from the lodge for the third day of their season.  We arrived too early... for anyone skiing at S.V. please remember that the lifts don't start running for the public until 9 AM.  It wasn't too much as a problem because their large beautiful lodge was a comfortable place to wait.  Unfortunately my passion for coffee collided with the skiing and made nearly made a huge mess when I realized they serve Starbucks coffee.  I guess you can chalk it up to big corporate brotherly solidarity as S.V. is a division of Sinclair Oil.  The barista who in her defense is simply trying to "live the dream" was nice but obviously not very well trained.  I guess there's not point in investing in training if you're going to use shit beans from $tarbucks.  If anyone wants to engage in a Starbucks discussion leave a comment as I'd be happy to go there at another time.  I do actually have some respect for the way they treat their employees although that doesn't change the fact that their coffee sux.

So, while sipping bad coffee I had a chance to observe the lodge environment and wait for the lifts to open.  There was a large group of ski instructors congregated around a table merrily anticipating the third day of the season.  Outwardly they were generally what you would expect from a big corporate oil company owned ski mountain, white, male, clean cut, and OLD.  Last year we observed the same phenomenon in Breckenridge.  Ski instructors have aged.  The only logical conclusion I can reach as to why they are all so old is that they are retirees that already live in the community.  That makes them attractive to the resort because they don't complain if the season is slow because there rent is already in their retirement accounts.  So teaching skiing is a hobby.  That's fine for the majority of their clientele who are also, yes you guessed it, OLD.  The old people chum around the mountain skipping lift lines and chatting about whatever it is that old people talk about.  I truly don't want to offend anybody, but it does disturb me in that if I were ever to be able to afford a private lesson (after I hit the powerball) then would I have to have one of these old guys?  It would be okay because all I would be paying for is to cut the lift lines, but I don't think many of them would be able to keep up.  Please don't take this as me being too confident in my skiing ability.  I'm not the best skier you will ever ski with, but these guys are really that OLD.  Rant over.

The skiing was great!  Sun Valley is steep and has lots of vertical.  They have to blow a lot of snow because they only get about 250 inches of real snow a year.  The fake snow and the real snow don't ever bond that well so they do get a bit of the White Ribbon of Death (WROD) syndrome.  We were able to get off piste a little and enjoy some awesome turns.  Day one was a total success even though we only went up twice.  My boots were hurting (don't worry I figured out why and fixed it) and Kristin, my wife, and I both learned long ago that it's not worth risking getting hurt skiing tired on opening day.

On to day two.  I promise not every day will include a rant.

Day two was a ski tour day during which I skinned up the local mountain outside of Twin Falls, Magic Mountain, and skied down the main pitch of the ski resort.  It was about 700 vertical feet and so I made two passes.  I took my four year old Rottweiller, Deacon, who struggled a bit in all the untracked snow.  He got dropped off in the car in between laps.  The conditions were awesome and I was glad to realize that I can push my old K2 Work Stinx skis with my new light weight plastic Garmont Excursion boots.  It was my first day in this particular pairing although I've used both pieces of equipment extensively, and I was well pleased.

Day three: Volunteer Ski Patrol at Magic Mountain.

Lots of fun with a great bunch of people.  Everyone was stoked to be out for opening day.

Day four: Another touring day on some back woods trails in my leathers and one lap up the ski area.  My greatest observation today was that the old "low" turning tele style is very effective on leather boots in steeper terrain.  It's kinda the cool kid thing to stand up tall and tele these days, but it is essential to stay low on those old soft boots.  If you're curious why a guy would hike up a mountain that he could ride a lift up the answer is because he's stoopid.  And wants to get in shape to go on a radical tour in the Tetons or Wasatch or both

Anybody who finds me here please leave a little feedback even if it's negative although I might erase it if it's too negative.  It's nice to know you're not alone!

Cheers.