A Snowy Saga pt 1

It all started this last Saturday - well, really it started before that.... I was hired for a facepainting gig - a four hour stretch at Gunsotck ski area. I was to be apainting the young racers and their families at the Bill Koch Youth Ski Festival, which is an event of the NENSA (New England Nordic Ski Assoc.). He told me I would be in a tent attached to the big tent where people were hanging out and getting warm. Okay, I can manage that.

It dawned on me later that I would be standing on snow, so I dug out my Bunny Boots (military issue arctic gear, good to about 70 below zero - I know, I've tested them at almost that cold!) and relaced them with cool lime-green laces. Voila! clown boots. I figured the rest of my wordrobe would work just fine. I'm good to go...

Friday; Phil looks at the weather and sees a big storm headed in for that night and Saturday morning. He calls me on his way up to a gig out past Gunstock and tells me we should get a room at the Gunstock Inn if at all possible so we will be on site and not risk missing the gig. So I do - they have only one room left, but it will work. So when Phil got home from the Diner at 9pm, we got him changed, I had already packed, and we were ready to go. Oh, yeah. and I'd spent most of the day without water as the bathtub faucet sprang a leak... fortunately Dad fixed it easily when he showed up around 8pm.

We get checked in and gear unloaded at the hotel at almost 11pm. At this point Phil tells me he hasn't eaten since lunch - and he tends to get grumpy when he's hungry! There was no way we were going to get a delivery up there at that time of night, but there was a chinese place open in Alton... and if I'd had any idea how far that was going to be we would have just gone to sleep! By the time we drove into the snowy night, which started just as we left and was quite heavy by the time we got back, and returned with food it was midnight. Yikes!