Bachelor got 38 inches of snow in the past 7 days. This is me on Saturday. It was deep.
Here I am with Jameson looking for our line.
We enjoyed the powder in the morning and raced slalom in the afternoon. The Mother was unable to get any good pictures. (Though she did better than the Other Big, who only managed to get a 23-minute video of the inside of his jacket pocket.)
But that doesn’t matter. The only picture that matters is the one of this scoreboard that shows me coming in 6th overall and 4th out of all the boys. Top 5 men get on the ‘podium’, so another goal met.
Because skiing in deep powder from 9 am until 3:30 pm on Saturday didn’t seem like an exhausting enough day for The Mother, I decided on Sunday we would backcountry ski.
It was a gorgeous, cold day.
We did four runs in amazing, deep powder. Everyone, even the much maligned Mother, was all smiles.
I’m now starting to understand why The Bigs love powder days so much.
Nothing special about this dinner…except my amazing sweet-potato-fry log cabin…
It snowed, so I was able to try out my snow plow. It didn’t work great. I’ve made some improvements and there is snow in the forecast for tomorrow morning, so I am anticipating speedy snow removal in the AM.
Monday was President’s Day. There was no school for me, but there was school for The Bigs. So, I went to college and I did The Mother’s work for her – again. I built a photogate for her lab class. It kind of acts like an electronic eye.
We had a bluebird, warm day on Saturday.
While I was training slalom, Mom and Dad met up with some former students and did some laps. I guess not all their students hate them.
On Sunday, my goal was to ski to the summit of Bachelor.
When we got to the Pine Marten Lodge, we saw that the summit route was closed due to an impending storm. So, we skied down and climbed back up to the lodge a second time, for a total of 2,766 vertical feet. We ran into my pediatrician skinning to the lodge at the same time we were. She was more than a little impressed!
Things we ate this week:
Peanut butter ramen, absolutely delicious but a little orange. We put orange bell peppers, carrots, and sweet potatoes. Next time we will use red peppers and maybe add something green!
Sauteed mushrooms, spinach, and walnuts with avocado and soft-boiled eggs on a bed of COTTAGE CHEESE. Weird? Yes. Yummy? YES.
Valentine’s Day is my 1/2 birthday, so we decided to go out and celebrate. We went to Mountain Burger. I definitely ate more than The Mother and I may have eaten more than The Father too. I had a strawberry shake to start.
I ‘built’ my own burger: lamb patty, jack cheese, smoked bacon, pickles, and ketchup. YUM!
The waitress also brought us some chocolate covered strawberries – on the house – probably because I’m so cute. I ate most of them.
Saturday was stormy. There was a lot of skiing without really being able to see.
There was also a lot of powder. I don’t get done with MBSEF until 2:30 and then I always want to do a run with The Bigs, so we all skied from 9 am – 3:00 pm. I went to bed at 8:30 pm. The Mother went at 8:31 pm.
I am skiing great and getting confident. Watch me launch off this jump.
Nailed it.
On Sunday we went backcountry skiing. Due to an amazing traffic jam, we left from the Swampy Sno-Park and headed to Vista Butte (we had planned to park at the Vista Butte Sno-Park, so this change probably added 4 miles to our trip).
I am the Manimal, so this did not bother me at all and I was all smiles and positivity the whole way.
If you look carefully, you can see The Mother trailing behind me in the distance, bet it will be another 8:30 bedtime for her again tonight.
She may be behind, but at her pace, she sees things we miss. Like this poor guy.
We finally all made it to the top of Vista Butte and when the clouds clear there was a Vista!
Ready to attack the hill.
There was about a foot of mash potato like powder. I handled it no problem.
After our ski, we had a picnic in the parking lot. Some of you may remember this picture from a January picnic. The Bigs have fancy Cliq chairs and I am sitting on the ground. Well…
Nan and Pop thought this was not OK. So now I have my own Cliq chair. Much better.
It’s not all skiing all the time…I’ve been doing a lot of shoveling lately – inspiring my latest invention – the scooter snow plow.
It was a big race weekend with a slalom on Saturday and GS on Sunday. I have made it a goal to get on the podium (top 5 men). Here I am on the slalom course.
I had to go second to last, so a LOT of kids went before me. There were some big ruts when it was my turn.
I handled it, no problem, and came in 9th overall out of 65 (7th out of the men – 2 away from the podium). It was a gorgeous day.
I blew off The Bigs and went to hang out with my friends in the afternoon. They were ecstatic I preferred to eat lunch with my friends and had themselves a nice little Cliq chair picnic in the sun.
We finished my Valentine’s Day cards – I was able to write my signature on The Mother’s computer and she inserted it into the cards – so I didn’t have to sign 28!
We put all the kids names around the Antelope.
Here I am at the start of the our GS race on Sunday.
The weather was quite a bit different than Saturday.
I skied well, finishing 10th out of 58 overall ( 6th out of all the men, ONE away from the podium), despite a rowdy fan that sounded a lot like The Mother.
We had two days off from school this week. Why? Good question. If you find out, The Bigs would like to know. They had to work both days, so I helped them out. Here I am fixing one of Mom’s circuits. When I wasn’t helping, I was watching movies or going to the coffee shop to pick them up coffees.
We took a break on Friday and went out for lunch. We went to Parrilla. I haven’t been since Pop took us when I was 4 months old! I had a Nashville Wrap: spicy fried chicken, tots, pickles, vinegar slaw, comeback sauce. YUMMY.
We also stopped by the library for some books. As this blog is being typed, I have already finished three of the books that are in that pile.
And, we went for a much needed haircut. Before.
After.
On Sunday I decided it was time to try and make my goal of skiing to the Cinder Pit at Meissner. Here I am ready to go.
Attacking the hills.
I left the snow park and I’m going to the Cinder Pit, so it should take 4.5 miles, right?
Or is it 5?
It ended up being 4.88 miles to the Cinder Pit and no problem for me. Here I am ringing bell (A must do for everyone who reaches the pit).
Ah, everyone looks so happy, but there are 4.88 miles until we get back. Will we make it?
After many days of snow and ice. We finally had a sunny day on Monday.
It was so nice we had a Cliq chair lunch in the parking lot.
The weather returned to The Mountain and Bend shortly after our lunch. I had the day off from school on Monday for Martin Luther King Day, had a snow day Wednesday, had the day cut short on Thursday, and another snow day on Friday. I kept busy – including making baguettes.
And watching movies. Lots of movies. Happy Feet, March of the Penguins, Benji. and Spy Kids.
The snow was so serious they had to break out two ‘truck snowblowers’ to clear the parking lot.
On Sunday we had our first race. At the start of the day, it did not look like a good day for a race.
I’m on Team France this year.
The weather ended up being OK and I did great. Final results show me in 10th place of the 54 nine, eight, and seven year olds who raced.
There was snow in the forecast all week at the mountain (they received 70 inches in 7 days) so we were pretty excited to hit the slopes on Saturday…but all the lifts were closed and it was snowing hard. We went cross country skiing instead. It was 1 deg F outside. Brrrr…
So cold, that if you look closely at The Mother, you will see a snotcicle hanging from her nose. Ick.
The way to stay warm when it is cold – go fast.
After skiing, we had to shovel and then go grocery shopping. It was 0 deg F and there was about 8 inches of snow on the ground. No one was excited. The Bigs demonstrated their blossoming laziness by declaring they were not cooking dinner and we were having tapas instead…smoked salmon, three different types of cheeses, air fried nuts, pickles, and store bought (GASP) bread.
We woke up on Sunday sure it was going to be the greatest powder day ever. We packed up our breakfasts and planned a 6:45 am departure (to beat the long-weekend-holiday-maker traffic). In the morning we saw that the mountain received 7 inches the day before and 7 inches overnight. We were ready! And then we got there. No lifts were running and there was a thick ice layer over all the powder. Eventually a few lifts started up. We had to hike to them.
While the conditions were not super, it sure was a pretty day.
In the afternoon, my coaches decided they had had enough dealing with the lifts. They set a small race course and we hiked to the top of it, took a run, and repeated. I did that a lot.
Then I came home and shoveled, sledded, and stayed outside in the snow until The Bigs made me come in.
On New Year’s morning, we did the MBSEF nordic relay race. On their website, they highly recommended costumes. We are not costume people and were pretty put out by this, but we wanted to do the race, so … Thankfully, The Mother had not given away my superhero capes and masks.
As you can see from this picture of the starting line – most other participants were costume people.
Dad started, Mom did the second leg, and I was the anchor leg. Here I am recovering all the time lost by The Mother and then some.
We won. Here are our awards – blow pop bouquets.
It has FINALLY started to snow in Central Oregon. Unfortunately, with snow comes heavy traffic to the mountain. We didn’t want to be late to MBSEF, so Dad made our oats and put them in thermoses so we could leave extra early and then eat in the car when we arrived.
You may or may not be able to tell why The Bigs have made a new rule that I must comb my hair before leaving the house.
Here we are enjoying our second powder day of the season. It is about time!
And the new recipe for the week – Kung Pao sweet potatoes from Veg-Table.
Santa may have been feeling a bit guilty about all the tofu he makes me eat. My stocking was full of meat and candy.
Santa also brought me a bongo board:
We made sure to ski Christmas Bowl on Christmas morning!
I also used the $5 Canadian I got for my allowance this week to buy a ‘sled’ run.
The guy running it let me do five laps instead of the one I payed for.
When we got home, I went to work building my robot.
I wrote some code to make it move.
Ultimately making it dance.
The Bigs made me a t-shirt to celebrate my amazing endurance and grit.
Some of the food we ate this week. Christmas breakfast: homefries, mushrooms and spinach, and eggs with delicious Captain Mowatt’s Greenie sauce. Thank you Cheryl.
Christmas dinner: bison steaks, asparagus, and brussels sprouts.
The Mother took an amazing cookbook out of the library called Veg-Table. This week The Bigs made two recipes from it. Kimichi creamed corn.
Lemon and artichoke yams.
New Year’s eve, we had the traditional pork posole.
The Mother wanted a nice Christmas photo of me. I was accommodating as usual.
We headed to the Great White North for Christmas. It is a good thing we have a minivan because we brought everything…even the air fryer and knives.
Our destination – Silverstar Resort. Same place as last year.
We chose a different condo this year. The Bigs were worried it was a mistake. It was not.
We have lots of room and can cook all our meals – which makes The Mother who is ‘frugal’ (euphemism) happy. The Bigs had concerns about our ‘vacation’ based on my Christmas card to them. The were worried it might not be relaxing.
No naps and alpine and cross country skiing every day!!! Well Day 1. Here we are downhill skiing…
followed by some skate skiing in the afternoon.
I am not even vaguely tired, cruising by the camera so fast I am a blur.
Day 2. Alpine.
Followed by some nordic classic skiing. Don’t worry, I did NOT ride the lift behind me.
After all that skiing, I needed to hit the hot tub.. Perhaps as not as bad as The Bigs…
Next up, I insisted on playing Life, ( I opened a lot of my xmas gifts before we left), thanks Uncle Jim. I feel like Pop played this game as a kid and internalized the message – he who retires with the most money wins.
Day 3. New snow and a sunny day.
I attacked a double black diamond and survived. The Mother is smiling for this picture, but she is crying inside – she is so tired.
I let The Bigs off easy and did not demand a x-country day on Day 3. On Day 4, we fueled up for a big x-country ski at Sovereign Lake. I made my breakfast look like The Mother’s new hat – see pictures later in this post to understand.
Sovereign Lake.
After skiing over 10 miles, I needed to refuel with some poutine. Fries, gravy, and cheese curds. Is there a better combination?
After that quick pit stop, it was time to ice skate.
See The Mother’s new hat? Ear flaps. Guess she is tired of being cold.
After ice skating, the hot tub? Nope. Time to tube.
Let’s just say the tubing was terrifying (for The Mother, at least) in a ‘fun’ kind of way.
While we brought all kinds of food and the air fryer, we decided to try a restaurant while we were here. We went to the Spice House (Indian Fusion). We had
Vegetable Pakoras (vegetable pakoras with mint aioli, mango pickle dressing, papadame and cucumber).
Basmati rice bowl. Tumeric rice, fried onions, radish, mixed greens, tadka dressing, mint aioli, tomatoes, red cabbage slaw, chutney, avocado mix, pickled onions and pumpkin seeds with butter chicken.
Butter chicken (butter sauce with fried onions and chicken thighs, served with naan).
And chana masala (chickpea and cumin curry topped with fried onions and coriander served with rice).
The Bigs have been making some pretty good meals too. For breakfast before our big x-country ski they made an omelet, homefries, and LCLOB bread.
They also made an amazing Xmas eve meal
of broccoli, tuna, shrimp, pita,
and mussels.
Santa was able to find me, despite being 581 miles from home.
