Thanksgiving & The World Cup

For Thanksgiving this year we celebrated with Tara, Thomas and Mark and had dinner at Mark’s house in Worcester.

I arrived at Noon with our Screen and a 5 day free trial of You Tube TV so I could watch a football game. This is a tradition going back fifty years to my childhood. My dad liked football, he played at Massena High School, liked to watch games on TV and on the sidelines. When we lived in Webster NY he was one of the team physicians for the R. L. Thomas High School football team and I remember going to games with him and watching from the sidelines. He also took me and Chuck to a couple of NFL games; one in Buffalo in 1973 when O.J. Simpson was on the Bills and another in Cleveland in 1979 with the Browns playing my team, the Miami Dolphins, during QB Bob Griese’s final season. Watching football is a way of remembering my Dad. Unfortunately the Lions did not show up to play and the Packers rolled all over them on this day.

Thomas and Jakobi chilling out with the dog before the feast…

Dinner was excellent as Tara cooked the best turkey I had ever eaten, so moist and tender. I made a Pumpkin Custard Pudding and dinner rolls, Colleen made mashed potatoes but forgot the canned tin of cranberry jelly. Jakobi made a Pumpkin Pie and Mark added a Pecan Pie. It was a super yum fun dinner with friends.

And afterwards we headed into Montpelier to go see the Hunger Games Prequel Movie at the newly re-opened Capitol Theater which put $1 million dollars into renovations for the theater after it was flooded in July.

Women’s World Cup Skiing at Killington

Colleen & Jakobi headed out on Friday for another Thanksgiving dinner in Millis Ma with Jayme and Billy. I decided to skip this as I wanted to go to Killington for the Women’s World Cup Ski Race. I have wanted to go to this for years ever since it first started in 2016 but it always conflicts with our TDAY weekend. This year I am made a point of going.

Skiing is another things that connects me to my Dad. He loved skiing, even competing in NASTAR races in his 60’s and I know he would have liked to be at Killington for the World Cup Competition. So I packed his old NASTAR backpack with hot tea, snacks, binoculars and extra layers and headed out early Saturday morning for Killington in order to make the 1st run of the Giant Slalom at 10am.

I have never been up the Killington Access Road and was a bit surprised to find myself on a road very familiar to the Mountain Rd in Stowe with lots of restaurants, bars, lodgings and ski shops. I was also surprised by how massive the Killington resort is; seven mountains and over 1000 acres of skiing. I parked at the Wobbly Barn and took a shuttle up to the K-1 lodge and base area where the World Cup was being held. It was a carnival atmosphere with outdoor vendor and food tents and a stage where Mix Master Mike spun tunes between runs of the GS.

The first run featured 66 skiers, mostly from Europe. Mikaela Schifrin skied 3rd and was in 5th place after the first run with a New Zealander atop the leader board. From the finish area we could see the last 3rd of the course and it was thrilling to see the plume of snow, backlit by the morning sun, rise above the ridge just before the skier shot into view deep in a crouch and zig zagging between gates. My binoculars brought the action real close.

Wandering around I found the spot where the competitors left the finish area and fans were lined up for autographs and selfies and a hung about for awhile watching the excitement as one after another the skiers passed by. Called out to by name by young girls in fashionable skiwear they happily signed racing bibs and smiled broadly for the selfie with their fans.

Between runs the inside of the lodge was a mass of people moving through each other like a single multi-bodied organism and I sought relief back outside in a chair on the deck with full exposure to the sun and the massive bass defining beats of Mix Master Mike. I had originally planned to spend the night, see a band at the Wobbly Bar, sleep in my truck and attend the Slalom runs on Sunday but was realizing this really wasn’t my scene.

The posh side of skiing which was all around me here in Killington with $200 lift tickets and designer ski wear does not appeal to me and I do not feel a part of it. Even the thrill of the racing is more of a tug of nostalgia tying me to my dad; I see it now more for what it is: elite and privileged white girls competing for a place atop the hierarchy, a giant ritual embraced by the global corporate structure and broadcast across the world to re-affirm the 1%’s place atop the 99% of the rest of us; a celebration of privilege, wealth and competition that undermines the cooperative nature of life at all levels should that ever try and re-assert itself.

I love skiing but I grew up learning to ski at Powder Mill Park, a county run ski hill with two rope tows in Rochester NY and my go to hill in Vermont is Cochranes Ski Area with two rope tows and a T-Bar in Richmond where I can ski under the lights on Fridays for $5 and get a homecooked meal in the lodge for another $10.

In high school I joined the German Club because it went on ski trips to Mt Holly in Michigan. Mt Holly is a man-made ski hill; a large hole dug out and the dirt piled up beside it and you skied from the top of the pile to the bottom of the hole. It wasn’t pretty but it was fun.

After college I spent a couple of Winters in Breckenridge Colorado as a ski bum; emphasis on bum. Bought a pass, worked in kitchens at night, skied every day and spent the evenings after work dancing to Grateful Dead cover bands in the local dives. The only time I interacted with tourists was in the lift lines and on the chairlifts. I was not in Breckenridge on some exclusive week long vacation in my fancy ski gear but living the life of a dirt-bag in the mountains chasing powder turns and corduroy dreams.

When I moved to Girdwood Alaska, home of Alyeska Resort, I lived in the woods and would poach runs and clip tickets and work as a liftie to get in turns. We snuck into the hotel pool to swim and sit in the hot tub and sauna. When not carving turns we hiked the streams and ridges of the glacial valley within which the resort and Girdwood lay and would hang out with our woods-dwelling dirt-bag friends at the local dive and make music at open mike night and dance to the local deadhead bluegrassy jam band. It wasn’t a long weekend or a vacation it was a way of life. That is my scene and I’m sticking with it.