[fatlazyless]

....ok....so yesterday for just seven dollars I took the plunge.....simply could not resist.....and went skiing for the first time since about March, 2010 .... took the blue free schuss bus up to the mountain at noon.....that blue bus is a super-duper ride .....lets you off right at the entry like a vip or someone .....conditions were not very good.....and huge areas of the WV mountain are still closed with very little natural snow coverage what with the prior three days of rain...on a scale from one to ten....I give it about a three-rating....the man-made stuff on the slopes is called loose granular/over frozen granular and conditions varied quite a bit from one trail to another.....Oblivion and Valley Run had better grip with more powdery loose granular.....while Tippiecanoe was more frozen granular with almost no loose powdery granular......so that was sketchy what with not really having any confidence to hold an edge on that hard icy surface...and worried about falling and sliding down...

....I even lost my lift ticket on the first chairlift ride thanks to the red plastic tie thingy used to hold the ticket to your jacket zipper.....but it did not make any difference as the ticket checkers on the two main lifts......a young man and young woman from Lima, Peru, according to their nameplates, let me go past onto the chairlift get-on entry....and seemed like it was maybe not too uncommon to loose a ticket(?)......later on ....I returned to the ticket window with the stub receipt and was quickly issued a replacement ticket....via the ticket computer or something?

.....so's I still got the ski bug!.....and starting on January 2.....I expect to shell out the big bucks.....and splurge $579 for a WV value pass......if I bought it today December 25.....it would not be any good till January 2 anyway......and hopefully by Jan 2.....the mountain will be having lots more coverage and better conditions!


....u-know....even at the price of seven dollars yesterday.....there was plenty plenty empty chairlift seats on both big lifts.....which was a surprise to me.....I was thinking it would be a mad-house at that low price but that was not the case......so's....just like the ski conditions.....one never knows until you actually hit the mountain?