Leaping to a bit of soreness

It's full on ski season at the moment, so I'm hanging on for dear life.  I have managed to get a few easy trainer spins in lately - by lately I mean about one a week.  I timed yesterday morning's spin to matching last evening's clinic I was teaching at Liberty to some of our exam candidates.

Perfect snow for night skiing - slightly stiffened granular without a hint of ice anywhere.  Yet not slushy enough to suck you down too much.  In anticipation of the temperature dropping, I overdressed.  I would soon regret that.

Among other things, the instructors I was skiing with needed to put a little juice in their legs and a little confidence in their bump skiing.  So... we started with long radius turns with a hop in the middle (known as leapers to you skiers)... then moved onto shortening the radius until we were in full on hops in short radius turns.  And we did _a lot_ of them - mileage, mileage, mileage.  And then, to top it off, we did them in the bumps.

Someone mentioned the last time they did this their core was a bit sore the next day.  My feedback was sooner than that - between all those hopping turns and a morning spin, my shin muscles were sore enough that I could feel it driving home last night.  Pushing the clutch in, speeding past the slowpokes.  (okay, you guys who know me well know that generally I'm the slowpoke - but 40mph in a 55 zone is unacceptable if you're in front of me). 

It's like I'm not 22 anymore.

Annoying habits...

It's been a busy winter so far, and I've spent quite a bit of time driving to far away places to slide on cold snowy stuff.  Thankfully, I've done a lot of this driving solo - but even I'm annoyed at the things I do.

1.  Press the scan button.  Allow radio to scan for up to 20 minutes.  Listen to 2 minutes of a very crappy song to which I can sing some of the words loudly.  Press scan again.  In north central PA and West Virginia, there are a plethora of country music stations and radio ministries.  I don't care for either.

2.  Tell myself I'm not going to eat candy.  Bring grapes to substitute.  Buy candy the first time I stop for gas.

3.  Forget to bring my water bottle out of the trunk after having a dead battery - 2 hours of parched-time.

4. Bring way too much stuff.  A boot/gear bag, a bag for the other uniform, a bag of clothes, a cooler AND my laptop bag.  On the last trip I brought two pairs of skis - like no one in West Virginia would have an extra pair if I broke a binding or something.

5. Leave my cooler in the car, figuring it is cooler out there.  Forgetting that even a cooler won't keep grapes from freezing when it's in the single digits.

6.  Singing loudly without knowing the words to pop music and hip-hop.  Even when it's the third time that hour that the Fireflies song is on.

This week, I'm staying home.  The car has a new starter and a new battery.  It won't even get to go on my next trip - someone else is driving to Elk next week!