Marcia, I thank you for describing skiing as I do. It is a passion unlike any other. I started skiing at 38 and quickly fell in love with the sport. Today I am 76 and still going strong although on flatter runs and less hours of the day. Two friends and I strive to get in 11+ days a year usually spread among Arizona, Colorado and Utah. we are already planning our 2017/18 trips. Think snow and exercise/workout while you wait.
Ed Cocca, Scottsdale, AZ

You don’t need a fancy ($$$$) bike, just one with multiple gears so you can adjust during your runs uphill and over time. And you get to wear your ski helmet during the summer!

Thank you for your posts. I just got back from a frustrating but wonderful trip to Whitefish, Montana. Wonderful because we had fresh snow everyday. Frustrating because I could have been in much better shape and couldn’t enjoy it to its full extent. As a 70 year old, 20+ years as a PSIA instructor-retired, plus a little racing, you can imagine my frustration.

Both of your articles reminded me just how lucky I am. When I was in my prime skiing days my goals were to keep skiing the blacks and have someone look at me and say, “look at her go!” Now I could care less what people say as I’m savoring those beautiful blue runs. Yes, my knees are hurting this week enough to keep me off the pickleball courts, but will I go again…HELL, YES!

PS to Marcia, I live in New Ulm, MN. Are you connected to any ski clubs that do western trips.

Each year as I finish the skiing and race season as I did yesterday, I ask myself if this will this be my last year. My spirit always says no. I love to ski. It is in my blood and in fact in my heritage (my Grandfather and Dad both skied in fact my Grandfather was instrumental in designing the two rope tows and one jumping scaffold where we paid $5 for a family season membership in Gladstone, Michigan).I remember the ski instructor who came to Gladstone and put ski poles in our hands and taught us a beautiful ski technique. I had an incurable crush on him. As an adolescent I remember crying when the icicles would start dripping outside my window as I knew spring was approaching.

I introduced my two children to skiing and watched them both grow to love it. But maybe I lived a bit too vicariously through my daughter who became a serious and accomplished racer. The world of racing as I know now as an adult racer is another world…..but not all of what skiing means to me. I ski/race at Buck Hill in a marvelous program of comraderie and competition called the Twin City Ski Challenge with people who are younger and older than I am and we all joke and look eagerly to the next year when we will move into a new age class and get better handicap points! Could we fall and get hurt? Yup. But I did that on my front walk last year. Does the competitive spirit diminish? Nope. I have probably never finished a run when I didn’t say with the young and older racers, “I could have been faster” or wish I had been anyway.

And when I get lucky enough to ski my dream– deep light powder in the mountains– and feel the silky softness under my skis and see the flakes fly up around me and sparkle in the sun it is for me an out of body experience. I treasure the serenity of skiing that kind of snow in the trees and stopping in a place where the evergreens with lumps of snow on them surround me like a cathedral. I often pause for praise and thanks in those moments that are among the most sacred in my life. I still get butterflies on a steep slope and and yet (most of the time) still “point ’em down”. I love the challenge, the whoosh, the quiet, and I love the laughter and banter on the lift and the friendship and stories drinking beer and wine afterward.

I will again cry when I wash my ski clothes but hopefully they will come smiling out of the basement again next year.

I am lucky to have something like this in my life. I know that. And could fall on my knees in gratitude (but I need them for next year!)