Season's end.

April 11, 5:30 pm. Just finished mowing the lawn--for the second time this year. Living in the verdant Willamette Valley, you come to expect things begin to green up in March. Now it's raining lightly after a more or less dry day. Spring is springing and may have already sprung.

Today may have been our last day of the season. We'll see what the weather holds and if The Pass is open next weekend. Spring now has the upper hand on Winter, and Winter is beginning to look a little battered. Winter had a lot of fight left in it last weekend, this weekend it looks a little dazed and confused, and maybe bleeding from the uppercut Spring gave it last Sunday when the temperature soared above 50 degrees at The Pass.

When The Pass goes to weekends only operations in the spring, and when it's warm, the snow gets a little punchy. What I mean is that there is a crust on top that is an inch or so thick that if you push on, breaks through. If a lot of people ski on it, or if it's groomed, it gets packed down and is just fine. If not, then it gets punchy. The other thing that happens in the afternoon is that things get a little sticky. Ok, a lot sticky. It definitely affects the fun factor on groomers, but can up the fun factor in the bumps by a lot. The stick slows you down and you can pretty much point 'em straight down the fall line. Rockin!

The end of the season is a bittersweet time for me. I'll miss skiing enormously for the next 8 months. It is, however, a mixed blessing. I'm pretty sure that if I skied year-round I would get even more worn down and tired than I already am. It seems like all I do in the winter is work on ski. Probably because that is all I do. Anyway, I'm exhausted. Moreover, it would eventually diminish my love of the sport. You know, absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that stuff. Besides, my obsession with skiing means there's a lot of other stuff I'm not getting around to. Like:

• Taking my wife to the movies
• Catching up on all the maintenance projects that need to get done around my home
• Getting the garden started
• Working (you know, the kind that pays for your skiing habit)
• Calling my parents (hi mom and dad... can't talk now, skiing!)
  
• Getting the band back together to finish writing the songs that will eventually go on the cd we've been working on for years

The band... yea the band. Which reminds me of another amusing ski anecdote; I once got, um, booted out of my band because of my skiing habit. To make things worse, this was a band that I started. I guess I shouldn't have taken off for two weeks over Christmas break. On reflection, I should have, and did. I probably deserved the boot (although I was pretty pissed off about it at the time). But, skiing was more fun. It's not like we were rehearsing to play Madison Square Garden. Our tour schedule primarily consisted of dive bars in Fort Collins and other towns in Northern Colorado. No regrets here.

Back to the present. Your fly is open.

Diane and Dylan ponder the end of the season. What are we gonna do now?

We did some point-of-view videos today to give readers a sense of what it's like. Dylan stars, I'm the cameraman.

Over the river and through the woods.

Follow me down I.

Follow me down II.

Follow me down III.

Follow me down IV.

Show me a three.

It looks a lot scarier on the video than in real life. If I can do it holding a camera, it must not be that difficult. I'm not super stoked about Dylan's digital Samsung camcorder. I think that my Canon Powershot takes movies that are just as good--and with better exposure (the first video clip was with the Canon). The downside is my Canon doesn't have a fisheye lens.

What's this guy up to? Not skiing. Looks to me like he's climbed a tower to use his cell phone. Some people don't know a damn thing about cell phone etiquette. Can you hear me now? He's probably asking "where are those helicopters Verizon promised?" It's all about the network, right?

Actually, he's fixing the webcam at the top of Eagle Peak (and talking on the phone). It's been broken for weeks now, limiting our window on the Willamette Pass world to the base and the highway. We applaud your efforts, Mr. Fixit.

Where did all the people go? The crowd is thinning out. It's down to 6 cars, 3 people, and two dogs. The snow is too--but there's plenty left for a few more weeks of fun. The poor suckers down in town haven't yet figured out that spring skiing is a hell of a lot more fun than mowing the lawn.

Maybe those people in town are right and it's time to go sailing. Either that, or just hang with the sailors and drink lots of PBRs at the Redneck Yacht Club in Lowell. For non-residents, Lowell is just across the lake from the former Dexter Lake Club of "Animal House" fame. I wonder what kind of food they have at the Redneck Yacht Club. Probably road kill, stuffed possum, and other respectable redneck stuff like this.

If you didn't click on the link above, you really should have.

Today was most likely the last day of our 2008-09 season. There is a chance we'll go up tomorrow, but the forecast calls for rain, and my love of snow does not extend to rain. There is also a chance that The Pass will be open again next weekend. If that's the case, we'll be there.

Either way, I'll post my end of season analysis sometime in the coming weeks. I promise that it will be worth waiting for. Or something.

See y'all at the Redneck Yacht Club!