Hey Jim! Nice to hear from you. Life is GOOD! I don't know if you remember, but just as our plans to sell our home on LI were coming together, I discovered I needed surgery for a rather large brain aneurysm. That was accomplished in Dec 06, and by March 07 we loaded a large Penske truck, put my car on a trailer, and followed by my wife (and the cat) in her Civic, we trundled west. The only glitch was a delay due to snow near Cheyene WY. While I continued to recover from the surgery, we rented a nice Townhouse while we house hunted. In June of 07 we found a beautiful 4 BR 4 bathroom ( Quote the Wife: "What if our three kids and their spouses all decided to come visit at once?") 4,000+ square foot home that is 17 miles from Wildcat Base at Alta. Our backyard is on the 13th Fairway of the South Mountain Golf Course. I did not attempt to ski that season, but I did attend the "End Of The Season" FTO BBQ held in a nice snow-storm at the Wildcat Base parking lot.
The following season (07-08 ) I started skiing in earnest. I had to work myself back into condition from the long recovery period following the surgery. I did my best to stay up with the FTO crew, and learned to ski stuff that I never encountered in the east. DEEP POWDER (Luckily I got some good advice for skis, boots, and bindings appropriate to UT conditions.) and steep chutes in the trees. I got so addicted to powder that I try to stay off groomed or compacted trails as much as possible. The FTO crew sure loves to hike to find untracked! Despite some week-long trips out of town during the season I managed 65 days. The 702 inches of snow that fell in LCC definitely gave me every opportunity to learn to ske better.
This current season has been somewhat different in terms of snowfall, but we are rapidly approaching 600 inches and have gotten over 130" since 3/23. Conditions the past two weeks have been fantastic! Even with three weeks of visiting out of town, I have managed to ski 76 days this season and hope to add a few more to that. My wife and I are both doing what we love, we get visitors from the east, we travel to the east coast to see kids and family, we travel to the west coast to see more kids and friends, and we travel around the country to Quilt Shows (Designing and making quilts is my wife's passion.). Since we have already visited all 50 US States, we are now planning some extended trips to the Asia and Australia. Yes, over-all LIFE is GOOD! Hope to see you out here some time.
