Sloping memories

So it’s two days until my vasectomy.  Nervous?  Not really. Although all indicators are showing there is no way I am going to able to milk this for longer than a couple of hours.  This is too bad because I was totally willing to endure some testicle pain for a bowl of soup and some isolated television time.  I am a simple man.  A simple man with a ready frozen bag of peas.

February can be such a blah month, especially when you schedule scrotum surgery in the first week. But things are looking up.  We have booked our first ski vacation as a family in March, stealing away to Whiteface Mountain for five days, three of which we will be actually skiing.

While initially excited about this trip, I am having recent trepidations. Last weekend we hit Blue Mountain for the first time as a family and to be honest, after about two hours of skiing, I am done. My thighs start to burn, my toes feel overlapped like Spencer Tunick photo and it becomes more a workout than a spirited dash down the slopes. My anxiety kicks in on the chair lift, especially if it stops and begins to sway, leaving me to contemplate which bones would actually break if I were to leap from said rock-a-bye steel death trap.

Once we have lunch and I get a beer in me (admittedly, après ski beer is one of the best tasting beers in the world, even if it is Coors Light), layering up and getting back out among the throng of jazzy goateed boarders and lean men who all look German or Swiss in their baby blue snowsuits is not my first option of things to do.

I am hoping with the larger mountain (ok, actual mountain) there will be more meandering type runs, where I can catch my breath, save my calves and enjoy the scenery.  Hudson, being the methodical pensive boy, is also not a fan of speed (and effort), so we may be partners on this journey, leaving the more experienced skier Steph to manage with the speed freak Tasman, the pudgy missile, who wipes out at least three times gunning down the hill, claiming he simply “forgets” to do his turns.

Looking good pretty ski bunny!

Last year it was mediocre Mexico, with too many sweet drinks and too much average food, leaving me feeling bereft of any real memory, all blended together like César’s rum punches. This year will be bookended six hour drives, with big time arduous skiing jammed in between.

I know, I know, first world problems.  But trying to find the perfect time together to save as a chapter on our respective books of life is elusive. Sometimes creating memories is tough.