letter jan 24 2011

Dear Everyone,
We have had two eventful weekends. Last weekend (Jan 16) we all, but Lucas, went to Albany for Anne Scalzo’s memorial service. Cindy elected to have Lucas stay at home because he needed to go to a three hour AP European history review (a three hour tour?). The four of us flew out of O’Hare Friday evening and arrived in Albany fairly late. We dropped Nicola off at Aunt Joanne’s, and the remaining three of us (Cindy, Jasper and me) went on to our hotel. By chance, we were given the same room we had had two weeks previously for Christmas. Saturday morning Jasper and I ate in the hotel and then we drove south to Ravena to the funeral home where Anne’s ashes resided in an urn. There was a meet and greet for several hours with Schmidts, Libertuccis and Scalzos. Cindy’s friend Melanie drove up with her new husband and his eleven year old son Phil, who entertained Nicola and Jasper with his vast knowledge of 1940s film stars. People looked and discussed three poster boards full of photographs of Anne, from her youngest days until the end. She was a vigorous young person, and was very involved with her kids when they were young, coaching baseball teams, and acting as a swimming team mom. We sat down around three for remembrances of her from the volunteer fire department (she was the long time treasurer) as well as her children. After the service some of us went to a nearby bowling alley and bar where we had an early dinner and watched the Steelers/Ravens game. As you all know, the Steelers won, (making Brittany quite upset). We flew back home to Chicago Sunday morning.

Monday was Martin Luther King day, so the kids stayed home, but I had to come in for work. Last week was finals week for the high school; Nicola and Lucas had some strange hours, and no school on Friday. This is why we took Jasper out of school Thursday afternoon (Lucas’ last test was Thursday morning) and I took the boys out to Utah to ski The Canyons http://www.thecanyons.com/ for three days. We were met at the airport by Aunt Alison who I induced to come up for a short break (because I don’t like to ski alone). We had originally planned to go to Park City, but when we made flight arrangements, we didn’t realize that this was the Sundance weekend. This actually worked out well for us, because that meant most of the hotel rooms were filled with non-skiers, which meant fewer people to jostle us on the slopes. However, we weren’t able to book rooms in Park City; hence our removal about five miles northward on Route 224 to this newer resort.

In any case, we met Alison at the Avis Car rental lot, and took possession of a Nissan SUV with 4 wheel drive, not that we needed it on the 20 miles of superhighway between Salt Lake City and Park City. Our GPS was quite useful in getting us to our quarters at Bear Hollow Village http://www.booking.com/hotel/us/bear-hollow-village.en.html . We arrived at about 7:30, but after check-in initially had a little trouble with the garage door (which ended in the partial destruction of the SUV’s rooftop ski rack [which we were told later on rental car return was obsolete, hopefully we won’t be charged to repair it]), as well as wandering aimlessly in the garage looking for the elevator. I had to go back to the booking office to get instructions on the location of the elevator, just as well, since they had not told us what floor our room was on. We finally got into our condo. We had a three bedroom that could have slept eight without much squeezing. There was a master bed and bath with a king size bed, and the other bedroom had bunk beds that were blunt pyramids, with a queen on the bottom and a twin on top. There was a living room with a built in gas fireplace which we used a lot. The kitchen was adequately furnished for breakfast with plates, bowls, glassware, mugs, and an assortment of kitchen equipment including the always essential mojito muddler http://www.homewetbar.com/pro-stainless-steel-mojito-muddler-p-1660.html. At 8:00, as planned, we were visited by a representative of Ski Butler http://www.skibutlers.com/ , who had boots, skis, and poles for us. After checking the fit of our boots, we drove about a mile a way to Kimball Junction to the Smith’s grocery chain store to get some prepared food for dinner and some breakfast supplies. Alison, working hard with her LiveStrong Calorie Counter http://www.livestrong.com/ bought some healthy salmon salad, while I had a chicken burrito; Lucas, mac and cheese; and Jasper, chicken wings.

The next morning we loaded all of our equipment into the SUV (we folded down the 40% seat to fit the skis in), and drove two miles to the Canyons. The parking lot is at the base of the hill. We struggled into our ski boots in the parking lot, and then took a short stand-up only gondola about ½ mile to the bottom of the resort. We quickly got our will-call lift tickets and ski school tickets, and then I delivered Jasper to ski school. Unfortunately, I think he was placed in a class a little too beginner for his skills the first day. Alison, Lucas and I took the main gondola up the mountain, where Lucas got placed with the adult ski school. Then Alison and I took off to the southern end of the resort to ski the dream peak area. The Canyons is a very broad resort, with up to seven peaks of skiing. However, the peaks are close together and separated by small valleys. Hence, the vertical drop and length of any run is pretty short, and many end with long boring run outs to the lifts.

On the third run of the day we tried a black run with some deep, crusty snow. I lost a ski almost immediately, and as I was sliding down to get it, I lost the second ski as well. The snow was up above my knees, and I couldn’t get enough packing underneath the skis to get them back on. So, I decided to just slide down the slope (it was short) on my butt. However, on my ‘graceful’ escapement from my predicament, I somehow lost a ski pole! Unfortunately, it was almost impossible to get back to the beginning of that slope from where it ends - - you have to take a long long traverse to another lift, and then a second traverse and another lift to get to it! So, we did another run or two at Dream Peak hoping someone would go down this seldom used trail and pick up my errant pole. It didn’t show up, so we bit the bullet and went all the way around. I took a cut-off around the steep part of the slope while Alison diligently searched for my lost pole. She pulled a muscle looking for me, and still didn’t find it. Then, when we finally got back to the Dream peak chair lift, there the pole was. Someone must have brought it in while we were slogging along. We ate lunch at the top of the Dream Peak, overpriced but good, but inadequate seating. Then we found some fun runs in the middle of the mountain. 3:30 rolled around, and Alison picked up Lucas while I went down the mountain to get Jasper. Jasper and I took a whirlpool treatment when we got back.

We ordered take out Italian food for dinner. Jasper had a barbeque chicken pizza (the leftovers were eaten over several breakfasts). Lucas had baked mostacciolli , I had pasta fagioli with meatballs, and Alison finished her salmon with an order of soup. Afterwards we watched “National Lampoon’s Vacation” on a DVD (The double DVD with this and NL’s European Vacation were given to me by friend Nienke Prins before our trip to France). The American Vacation movie had some funny bits, but it was overall not very good. It’s a good thing I did bring the DVD, because the main TV only got CNN, and the TVs in the individual rooms did not work.

Saturday was another day on the slopes. Jasper was put in a more skill appropriate group, Lucas worked on some advanced skiing and moguls in ski school (next year he and I will need to take some classes together!), and Alison and I had some really nice skiing on some steep groomed slopes, as well as some advanced intermediate/ easy advanced mogul slopes. Afterwards, Alison took us out to dinner at a nearby restaurant called Shabu Shabu http://www.urbanspoon.com/r/54/1506944/restaurant/Salt-Lake-City/Shabu-Shabu-House-Park-City , that serves Japanese hot pot meals. Alison had kobe beef with snow crab, Jasper had pork, Lucas had shrimp and octopus, and I had scallops. Basically, we sat at a table that had an inset hot plate. A stainless steel pot sits over the heat, and the water is flavored with sesame oil, soy sauce, garlic, onion, and hot sauce. When the broth comes to a boil, the server tips in a quanitity of cabbage, enoki mushrooms, carrots, tofu, seaweed, etc. They bring you your raw meat, and you cook it in the broth, dipp it in sauce, and eat it with rice. When all the meat is done, they throw udon noodles in the broth, cook it for a few minutes, and then put all of the leftover broth and noodles in a bowl. Delicious! Afterwards we watched the European Vacation movie. This was actually quite funny, if stupid, and worth spending 100 minutes on.

Sunday morning we skied until 12, cleaned up our room, left the skis for Ski Butlers to pick up, and drove back to the airport. Unfortunately, the Southwest flight home was on time, so we were not able to watch the end of the Packers/Bears game, but I was not surprised that the Packers won, or that Cutler wimped out. We missed all of the Steelers win, mainly because we were waiting for almost 45 minutes for our luggage to arrive at Midway, which really has the worst service. Southwest is great if you only have carry-ons (actually, the bags came off almost immediately in Utah).

It was a fun trip, without any travel snafus. Maybe next year we will try Alta/Snowbird (and maybe one more day of skiing).

Love, H.