#53 Ski in Colorado

I was able to cross off my second goal last week! I know it seems strange to have to say "in Colorado" when that is my current home, but as it turns out, though I've skied since I was a child, and have lived in Colorado for 6 of my years now- I had never done it.

My rationale is that I'm a bit of a sissy when it comes to being scared. It's not a feeling I like, and certainly not one that I seek. (No thank you, rollercoasters.) I'm not easily scared by noises in my house or being outside at night, stuff like that, so I tend to be able to avoid feeling scared for the majority of my life. I promise this relates to my goal. You see, because I have been taking skiing lessons since I was a crying Ski-Wee on the hills of Massachusetts, I know how to ski. I'm no Jeremy Bloom, but I can make my way down the hill. But I don't like feeling out of control and I don't like feeling like I'm getting in people's way, and skiing down double blacks scares me. So I stick to the blues and greens, and I guess I got a little bored with skiing. So in college I decided to learn to snowboard with some friends. Long story short the first attempt was a disaster and the next day was even worse. So a friend of mine who was an instructor and some well qualified roommates did their best to teach me, but I am not a girl who feels comfortable flying down a bunny hill sideways.

Additionally my college roommate Amy's parents are unceasingly generous to me, and in the past few years I've been fortunate enough to spend a few weekends at their house in Utah. The house is at Alta, one of the few remaining skiers only mountains in the world, so unless you want to drive yourself over to the next closest mountain to snowboard, make your own lunch, and in all likelihood return home to find your stuff at the top of the tree and Amy's dad inside grinning-you ski. So I've snowboarded in Colorado, and I've skied in Utah, but I haven't skied in Colorado- until last week.

Some friends from my church in New York were here, in Breckenridge to ski/board on a mountain (the East Coast has what can only be described as hills). So I met them for the day and loved every minute. Well I loved most minutes. I did, at one point spend an hour looking for a place to park. I also love taking pictures from the lift, so I enjoyed the "taking a picture of every goal" portion of this goal. This may stem from a time in college when I was in the darkroom and a very cool stoner from my class kept telling me how much he liked the picture I was working on-a picture of a ski lift. We kept having prints in the developer at the same time and when the chemicals washed across it to reveal the image, every time he was more excited than the last. It was funny because he was yelling and darkrooms tend to have an unspoken no speaking rule. Usually the subjects in my pictures were too fully dressed or not edgy enough for this kind of praise from classmates in the fine art department at CU, so it was especially meaningful. So thanks to that stoner, and an awesome app on my phone called Hipstamatic, I present to you, some pictures of chair lifts...

Two down!