Christmas Eve

My Christmas Eve tradition is to take the skis out for an afternoon or evening tour. With afternoon temperatures reaching the mid- to high-40s for the last two or three days, however, this year's performance had to change. Don't get me wrong, it is nice to be outdoors in the afternoon, but the snow is melting fast and what is left is pretty sloppy and gloppy at 48F. The solution was to take a lap before the sun cleared the canyon wall this morning. So, that's what I did. I went out to Center Creek at 8:30a while everything was still frozen. Between VSO and me, we'd built a pretty good track through both the lower and the upper meadows over the last couple of weeks. The entire loop is just a shade over two miles in length. The snow was firm and I was cold, so I went out hard. I'm not trying to intimidate anyone who is hoping to make the team traveling to Sochi later this winter, but I clocked in at 30 minutes on the nose—a 4.1 MPH moving average. (If the Organizing Committee wants to give me a call, I will talk with them, but I'm pretty much retired, and I think we ought to let the younger athletes go to Russia.)