Drive Me to Northstar

On March 24, I wrote that the day before my sister and brother-in-law showed up at around four and we had cheese and crackers and cocktails. My friend and I had been playing cards. The tri-tip was delicious as were the salad and potatoes. My sister and our hostess talked a lot. They had both gone to UC Berkeley and her family was near ours growing up.

After the meal we chatted for a bit and when my brother-in-law and sister left there was a bit of snow. The three of us agreed to watch the Star Trek reboot movie which turned out to be pretty good. I went to sleep early.

When we got up at 9:30, I accepted my friend’s gracious offer to drive me to Northstar and we made plans to meet after she went snowshoeing at the end of the ski day.

At the rental shop, getting set up, I opted for a half-day on the slopes. I decided to put my boots in a locker because during my previous visit to Northstar my shoes inexplicably disappeared. I sat for coffee at Vous, which used to be called Starbucks even though place hadn’t changed at all in the intervening period.

I adjusted my boots and then I went and caught the gondola to the middle of the mountain. Then I went as far as possible to Mount Pluto on the express which kept stopping, much to everyone’s consternation.

I went down a black diamond to find the cat track on the next rides. I took three blues The Islands, Castle Peak and Drifter to find as much as I could of Backdoor the lower cat track. I had an Irish coffee in the middle of one of those runs. Made a few good rides and a bunch of nice turns. I find that the turns are better when the snow is fluffy white – much more forgiving. There was hail at the end of the day.

By then my friend had messaged that she was getting ready to meet me. So, I got one more ride in on the backside and arranged to meet her at the bottom. The ride on the front of the resort to stagecoach was rough but fun. I dumped the skis and walked to meet my friend for a drink before we returned to the house where I took a nap.

We had made soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner before watching TV.

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.