Fourth Anniversary Getaway

Angela and I enjoyed the most snow we’d seen all Win­ter dur­ing the first week­end of Spring.

Angela and I cel­e­brat­ed our fourth anniver­sary a week late this year since she had to leave for a con­fer­ence out in San Fran­cis­co on the day of. It’s more impor­tant that we did some­thing rather than get hung up on the fact that nation­al orga­ni­za­tions don’t sched­ule their events around us.

We decid­ed on doing some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent this time and drove up to the Win­ter­green Ski Resort here in Vir­ginia (just south of Char­lottesville). Angela had nev­er tried ski­ing before and I had only been once myself, about eight years ago. Since we were going so late in the sea­son (the last ski­ing week­end for this resort, any­way), we weren’t even sure if we’d get to see any snow, let alone enough to ski on. I know that they make snow as much as pos­si­ble, but with tem­per­a­tures in the 70’s the pre­vi­ous week, I had my doubts.

Well, there was­n’t a whole lot on the ground when we arrived late Fri­day night for check-in. How­ev­er, much to our sur­prise and delight, it snowed about 4–5 inch­es overnight. For hav­ing so much snow, the place was­n’t too crowd­ed. We were able to rent our equip­ment and get out for the free begin­ner’s les­son with no trou­ble (that is, after a most deli­cious break­fast… mmm, choco­late chip pan­cakes). That’s one of the real­ly cool things about Win­ter­green; they have staff on the begin­ner’s slope (the Pota­to Patch, as opposed to the com­mon ‘Bun­ny Slope’) all day long to offer lessons and help begin­ners in trou­ble. Although she did­n’t seem to think so, Angela got the hang of it quick­ly. She need­ed to work on her turn­ing some more, but she had great bal­ance and was able to get her­self stopped with­out too much trou­ble (much more than I can say for my attempt at snow­board­ing about ten years ago; that was not pret­ty). After a less-than suc­cess­ful first run at the green cir­cle slope (the ‘Dobie’), she kept to the begin­ner slope for a cou­ple of more tries before we head­ed off to lunch.

After lunch, Angela had some spa time sched­uled, so she took the truck up the hill to the resort’s real­ly nice spa facil­i­ty. I, on the oth­er hand, was deter­mined to get bet­ter at turn­ing and gen­er­al­ly stay­ing upright on a pair of skis. So, for the next two-and-a-half hours, I went down the green cir­cle slope just as much as I could stand to. Some­where dur­ing that time, we got a lit­tle more snow; and by ‘a lit­tle’, I mean it was a com­plete white-out. My sun­glass­es (or make-shift gog­gles for a non-ski­er such as myself) were com­plete­ly iced over and I was essen­tial­ly just slid­ing down hill attempt­ing to avoid the dark blobs ahead of me. I’ve nev­er had so much fun while cold, sweaty, and blind. Just before the slopes closed for the evening, the sun came back out for my very last run. It was an insane change in the weath­er (although per­fect­ly com­mon for this side of the Blue Ridge Moun­tains) and I could not have asked for a bet­ter last run. I real­ly felt like I had got­ten a lot bet­ter in that day of skiing.

Lat­er than night, Angela and I went out to din­ner and were treat­ed with an amaz­ing sun­set view. After­wards, we chilled out with a mas­sage (not some­thing I do a lot, but I can see the attrac­tion). We did­n’t do any ski­ing on the sec­ond day, but rather just chilled out all morn­ing before head­ing home. On the way back to Rich­mond, we stopped off at Ver­i­tas Win­ery for some sam­ples. We were pret­ty impressed, not just with the wine selec­tion, but also with the beau­ti­ful scenery.

All togeth­er, it was a great week­end and I could­n’t have asked for bet­ter com­pa­ny to spend it with.