First Purchase 2009

I hope everyone had a great start to the New Year!

We ended the year by watching a couple of pretty fireworks shows and eating some good food.

Ironically we also found out that we have cable at the condo?! Of all the people to receive cable for free, we are likely the least appreciative as we don't normally watch TV. I have since after rediscovering the Food Network!

The bright sunshine coaxed me out this morning to ski first tracks even though I was feeling cosy under the comforter and catching up with blog reading and commenting. I continue to discover such great new blogs that just reading takes some time now!

Shortly after my 2nd run, I called it quits and an emergency purchase had to made. We found out that it is -21 celcius at the top of the lift with a windchill of -38 celcius and I have to say that I agree with them. We nearly froze our fingers off.

Our gear is top notch but it needed to get better so our first purchase of 2009 were ski mittens. It is amazing how you can feel each seam in the glove when it gets so cold. I may return later to buy a open face balaclava (yes, I know that I will not be winning any fashion awards here...) to get some coverage in the in between places my neck tube and helmet miss.

This reminds me of a funny story from my last ski program. It was 8 women for 8 weeks, in a ladies' ski afternoon program. Our instructor was a spirited German man who was a realtor the other part of the time.

He was very inspiring as he didn't start skiing until he was 51 and wanted to give back to the community by volunteering to teach -- he could definitely relate to our collective apprehension and fear regarding heights, hitting trees and breaking various body parts.

After the last lesson was a wine and cheese and you should have seen his face when he "saw" all of us for the first time, with jackets, helmets and tinted googles removed! He said "My god, I do teach a group of women! There isn't one person in this room who isn't good looking!" We just howled! I guess we never considered just how covered up we really are in this sport.