When it snows...go!

Willamette Pass Resort
Saturday, February 16th, 2019

It was a long week.  I attended a surprise retirement party for my mentor, boss, and friend Terry Moore.  Terry was one of the founders of ECONorthwest--the consulting firm that I've worked for over the past 20+ years.  After 40 years of work he certainly earned his retirement.  The party was fun--the Moore siblings have a tradition of practical jokes, or punking, in the current vernacular.  Terry thought he was coming to do a talk to the urban systems team about his reflections on the past, present and future of the firm.  He got more than he expected.

The planners of the event were particularly clever - Terry is scheduled to go visit his brother in Tucson in a couple of weeks and the last thing he thought would happen was his siblings would be in the office.  He arrived with his wife Cheryl and John Topogna, the ECO president, said a few words.  John then had Terry open a very large gift.  After he cut the ribbon, his siblings jumped out of the box. Terry's reaction was priceless.

I owe Terry a huge debt.  He tirelessly worked with me, coached me, and encouraged me in the early portion of my career.  I first met Terry shortly after we moved to Eugene for grad school.  I was immediately impressed by Terry - his depth of knowledge and understanding of policy and planning was incredible. He's one of the smartest people I've had the fortune to know--and I've known a lot of smart people. It's one of major turning points of my life that I met Terry and had the presence of mind to figure out how to work with him. I've had the good fortune of following my feet at key points to take advantages of opportunities that were presented.  Thirty years later and I'm closing in on the end of my career and trying to figure out what comes next.  In this instance next was skiing again.

I wasn't really too motivated to get up at six.  I did anyway.  The snow report was 7" which wasn't all that exciting.  What sealed the deal was that the forecast was for another 4-8" today.  That seemed promising to me.

So, I got up and got ready.  I was out the door at 7:00.  Snow started not far past Oakridge.

And got with it after the tunnel.

 Oddly it was the same crew waiting for rope drop as last week.

I was on chair #2. I was really happy that I made the effort as I carved big GS turns and got rewarded with face shots on every turn.  It got to the point where breathing was a little dicey.  I wasn't complaining.  The next few runs were just as good.

Now we're talking...

The back side was amazing.  The first run down the Northern Exposure trees was a full on point-em-down-the-hill-knee-deep-face-shot fest.  Amazing!

I took a short break around 1.  It had snowed a bit in the morning.

Dropping the cliff.

Hard to tell, but it's snowing really hard.

The road home.

What an amazing day.  It was the best day of the season so far.  So much snow and so many good runs.  The weather report is promising--more snow on the way.