I kind of deliberately didn’t set an alarm and we woke at 7:30. The boys went next-door and messed around. I got them dressed and the bell rang for breakfast. The chef had made vegan donuts and offered eggs and bacon.
I finished the coffee. I started packing and the boys went to the ping-pong room. Later they sat in the big while I got us packed. After I had located all of the missing mittens and socks we finished up and we said bye to staff.
On the way to the resort, we tried to keep a good pace since we were nearly out of time for their ski lesson. I noticed that the road has a couple of turns but it’s mostly up and down to the gondola.
The boys knew their way well enough. Some of the driveways don’t go anywhere. We made it to the garage and gondola fine and had 10 minutes. When we got off we were out of time and I ran – I left the boys to follow. We ran into a cat in the lodge parking lot. So I had to wait.
I was totally out of breath when we made it and the instructor was nearly ready to call it quits. However, we were able to get an hour with him. I ran and got the boys boards and swapped their boots while he spoke to them. I was ruined.
I dropped the bags and the instructor told me to come back at 12:15. I took the kiddy lift and later took a big lift with a great view of the train tunnel not Donner or Tahoe. I got stuck in a drift but later met the instructor and he told me about the lesson. One of my boys was holding a snowball to remind himself not to be hunched down. The instructor gave me some points on how to help them.
Initially we went up the conveyor but then the boys wanted to go up one of the neighboring lifts. They had trouble dismounting. My helping them go down slope also was a problem so I tried to give them space. One trip up the boys asked to go to the lodge so we stopped to eat. By this point their mother was getting near. I let the boys know and they were enthusiastic.
One of the boys headed back on to the slopes. The other boys was conflicted because his mom was coming but eventually he headed out too. That’s when their mom arrived. I gave her one of our radios and she met them on the kiddy slopes. That was when I tried to get a run in but one of the boys gravitated to me.
Then I ended up riding one of the bigger lifts with both boys. We conferred with their mom and agreed that she would meet us later. When she left I asked the boys to go up the biggest lift and we went against my better judgment. The first run down was great. We met a random lady. Then we one of the runs to the other side of the mountain - which was also great. At one point one of the boys noted that “this is the kindest he has ever been to his brother.”
From the top of the mountain then the boys took what seemed like an easy run but fell a couple of times - the low-grade had made it hard for them. Then we got to a steep incline and one of the boys freaked out. At first I tried to be helpful but eventually I was just angry and he ended up on his own. I wasn’t very nice either.
We mostly just let him lead and things were better than the previous run though there so it was a win. The last time he fell I collected the boards and dropped everything at the ski school. Their mother found me there and brought the boys their shoes.
We had hot cocoa at the lodge. Then I finished up and gave the boys a peptalk. We dropped off the bags and boots at the school and their mother’s borrowed car and I said bye to them.
After that randomly bumped into a friend at the bar in the resort lodge. I showed him pictures of the tunnels near tunnel four. We walked out together. I had texted with a coworker and he came to pick me up then. We spent a lot of time catching up – talking about work. I got photos of the train tracks and the lakes. We had fries at a bar in Truckee and checked out some of the local color. He told me about his new house.
After I said bye to my coworker, I walked to a hotel I had booked for that night and later went to a local restaurant for a sandwich.
In the morning of the day that I wrote this I woke at 9:30 and went to the diner across the street to have French toast. The train home was late so the morning was mostly watching families head out to the slopes. I boarded the Amtrak after a few hours of waiting.
On the train I sat in my seat for a while texting pictures of Donner Lake to people I knew. Then I sat in the café and chatted with tourists until Emigrant Gap. Later I sat downstairs and started writing.
This is an occasional series chronicling my life. This Notebook Analysis series is meant to be contemporaneous piece developed as an agglomeration of my notebook pages. In each of these posts I used my notes to develop my recent thoughts.
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