Skied a real mountain this past weekend.  We drove all the way to Vermont to ski Killington.  It was every bit as good as I thought it would be and then some.  It is about a 20 minute ride in the gondola to the top of the mountain.  In contrast, the longest chair lift at 7 Springs is only 9 minutes.  The steep terrain is just as steep as the black diamonds at Snowshoe but at least 3 times longer.  I think the thing that really made it worthwhile was the freshly made sugar-coated waffles that you can get at the bottom of the slope so that you have something to eat on the ride back up to the top. 
The cloud cover was very dense and limited visibility at the top of the mountain but skiing in the clouds was really pretty cool.  Would be nice to go back sometime when the sky is clear and I bet you can see forever from up there. 
I skied off the edge of the slope once and sunk into waist deep powdery snow.  I fear that I have been spoiled now and will probably not enjoy skiing 7 Springs or Snowshoe again.  Hidden Valley however still has some fun challenges because of all the out of bounds areas that can be skied.   
Still lots of skiing to be had in the next couple of months...

Another Santarchy has come and gone.  This year we came up with some new and exciting adventures like stopping in at the strip club downtown and singing carols to the scientologists.  Our numbers were not as great this year, seemed to be only 50-60 people at the most.  Still 50 people wearing costumes walking around town and stopping at every bar is a lot of fun.  There were some great new costumes such as Frank dressed as Ralphie from A Chirstmas Story in his pink bunny suit.  There was also godfather Santa, Scrooge, and the Easter Bunny.  We of course did all the favorite usual activities like riding the mechanical bull, line dancing, visiting the ice rink downtown and basically confusing the hell out of everyone who saw us.  The children loved us as usual as we handed out toys except for one toddler in a stroller who started crying when I tried to give him a toy.  Maybe it was me, I mean if you were 3 years old and saw a drunken santa staggering out of a strip club you'd probably start crying too.  We hit Macy's which is one of my favorite parts.  We filled the aisles and all the shoppers stopped in place and just stared.  We got stuck on the up and down escalators for a while.  There is something fun about just riding up and down.  Then we got the Macy's santa to join us after he got off work. 

Every year I try to write a blog about this and explain just who much fun it is but its one of those things you really have to experience to be able to appreciate it.  I only stayed with the group for 7 hours and then I decided to head home at 9pm.  See all the pics in my Santarchy 2008 picture folder.

It seems at some age in life you start thinking about death more.  At least I have.  Perhaps its because I'm closing in on the age of forty in a hurry and its like when you wake up at noon on Sunday and realize that most of the weekend is over and you feel regret because you slept through most of it.  Next usually comes the mid-life crisis and I get to buy a fast car and sleep with some 19 year old bimbo.  Only I already drive a car that goes as fast as I want it to and I really do not have the energy to try to get a young girl to sleep with me. 

Thinking about death is not a problem however.  Fearing death is the problem.  If you can accept that death is an inevitable fact and learn to be comfortable with it then its not really a problem.  It just makes you start to think about what you have done with your life and what kind of legacy you are going to leave behind.  I do hope that I can build some kind of legacy but to date I have not been very successful in that category.  

    One way that I'm tryig to deal with these thoughts is to simply donate to charity.  Giving to charity makes you feel like good or something.  Maybe it helps to relieve some of the guilt or remorse.  Perhaps it is because I just spend most of my money on beer so it is nice to give it to someone or some organization that can do something useful with it.  Right now we are giving to the American Heart Association for their up-coming Heartwalk event.  So now I'm donating to their upcoming fund-raising event in hopes that it will give me some kind of satisfaction and help me to sleep at night.  My wife gets very excited about the American Heart Association and when you think about it the heart is kind of fundamental to life so it makes the most sense.  Here is the link if you want to help out or join us on the up-coming walk.  HEARTWALK   

    I also like to give to the heart association because I've already seen a couple of my friends die from heart problems and a couple of others have serious heart conditions.

Had to go throughRphila and right to claymont de today, stopped for dinner at one my old hangouts.

Had to go throughRphila and right to claymont de today, stopped for dinner at one my old hangouts.

Today I got my exercise from chopping up a fallen tree in the back yard.  I'm not a lumberjack by any stretch of the imagination but it was actually fun splitting the logs in half.

It was a way for me to vent some of my frustration on the tree that destroyed 2 of the fences in my back yard.  Lately there has been a rash of tree-related incidents in my life.  First, my friend Dave crashed into a tree that literally fell right on top of his car.  Then two trees were knocked down in a storm on our camp in Oil City.  Next, a branch of a tree almost fell on my head while I was jogging in the park.  Finally, this tree fell in my back yard and destroyed two of my fences.  I am one of the "Save the Planet" people who believes in recycling and reducing pollution but I'm starting to think that we shouldn't bother saving the trees.

It was also a good way to get some exercise.  I have come to loathe doing push-ups and sit-ups and so it was nice to have a good way to workout that actually accomplished housework at the same time.  I continue to look for ways to get exercise while doing something productive.  It is thanks to my friend John that I exercise at all these days.  I have fallen into a slump lately and gained a good bit of weight.  John however, has been instrumental in getting me to realize I should take action now before it gets out of control.  Hopefully I burned a lot of calories today and there is still more wood to be chopped up tomorrow.

So I had a really crappy day at work today.  I mean work has been pretty crappy for the past several months but the paychecks make it worth showing up every day but I feel useless at work because they ask me to do stupid stuff and after I spend a week of my life building a project they will have a meeting and realize they didn't actually need it.  In a year I think only two of the programs I've written for this company are actually in use.  Again I don't mind.  Its their money if they want to throw it away paying me to write stuff they don't use then they can.  I just would be a lot happier if I was actually being paid to do something useful. 
Anyways, I don't mind so much about work.  I'm used to it.  I've worked at 12 different companies doing this and I'm compiling data for a book about How Not To Run A Corporation.
Then I come home to bad news in the mail.  Just stupid stuff but this really completes the lousy day I'm having.
So finally, I decide to go out for a jog thinking exercise will make me feel better.  As I'm trudging along through the park near my house I hear the sound of branches breaking and look up to see a giant tree branch come crashing down right in front of me.  If I had been 5 steps further it would have cracked my skull open. 
This is when I remember that god hates me.  I realized this many many years ago when I was trying to figure out why life sucks so badly.  At first I thought maybe there isn't a god and that is why life sucks.  Then I realized, no there must be a god because some force is directing all of its evil at me.  If it were just nature it would be random and everyone's life would suck equally but being as there are some people who have some pretty happy lives and a bunch of people with really sucky lives I prefer to lean towards the theory that there is a god and he hates us.   Besides there are many people that will demand there is a god and all of his actions are written in a 2000 year old book.  Their lives seem to suck pretty bad too so I assume they are prescribing to my theory that we were put here because god hates us.  Maybe god's life sucks and he wanted someone to be worse off than he is so he created us and now he can derive pleasure out of watching us suffer. 

Really broke through some personal barriers on this years ski trip.  Finally started going down the black diamonds at high speed.  Might not seem like a big deal but if you go down a black diamond and try to go slow and control the whole run - first of all it isn't very fun but more importantly it hurts your legs like hell.  Going fast requires getting over that fear of falling.  The fear that you are going to get hurt really bad if you fall.  In fact, you have to embrace the idea of getting hurt.  Accept it as part of the thrill of the ride.  In fact, if there was not a chance of getting hurt it probably wouldn't be as much fun.
Also started going over the jumps faster.  Again its overcoming the fear of getting hurt.  In fact, I did get hurt a couple of times but I kept going back and trying harder. 
When you reach a certain age it seems like all the exciting new experiences you will have are behind you like learning to ski, getting laid for the first time, or cliff diving and then you find a way to take one to a new level.  I think it helps to make me feel like I'm not so old.

Friday morning we wake up to dense fog and immediately gear up and hit the slopes.  The fog is so dense, visibility is about 20 feet and the jumps come up from out of nowhere.  By 10am it starts raining and we decide its only going to get worse so its time to go back and get in the hot tub.  Spend a couple more hours sitting in the hot tub with ice and snow hitting us in the head.  Its not as exhilarating as snow hitting you in the face though.
Finally end up in the bar drinking martinis!!!

We arrived at Snowshoe on Wednesday about 4pm.  The weather was pretty decent so we checked into our room, got our gear on and headed straight for the slopes.  Got a few good hours of skiing.

On Thursday the sun came out and the snow was melting rapidly.  Big bare spots became visible on most of the slopes and we were mostly skiing in slush.  Still having a good time actually skiing big slopes for a change.  Stopped into the bar for an $8 beer of Landshark Lager but it tasted just like MGD, so we went back to the room where I had a secret supply of Schaefer.