London bus syndrome

It seems like Annalie’s trips have taken on a bit of a London Bus attitude. Not having been anywhere for a few months, she’s had three in the space of 10 days. First was a trip to Washington DC, predominantly for a magazine awards ceremony, but she also arranged a meeting with her contact from Airbus North America.

The awards ceremony ended up being a really good networking event for her, meeting up with some old journalist friends in Geoff Thomas, Perry Flint and Brian Straus (familiar names for those R-R readers out there ;)).

She also had her first introduction to the head of PR for Air New Zealand and a few of his team. They were a very good bunch and welcomed Annalie as a drinking partner ;) She made the most of it and ended up consuming plenty of wine with them and Geoff Thomas until well into the early hours. Not the brightest option when Annalie had to get up at 5.30am to catch a flight back home! Still, she made it, even if she didn’t feel like it!

Her second trip was a day out to New York to a luncheon to see an industry commentator speak. Her final excursion was to Phoenix, Arizona, for a meeting. Considering Phoenix is in the middle of the desert, Annalie felt rather overdressed with her overcoat from the North East. But she went from the 80s to 24 F in the space of a few hours, so the coat was needed in the end.

This weekend we’ve ventured back up to Killington, but found ourselves a relatively cheap motel to stay at. We got up bright and early on Saturday to drive the three hours to the resort, only to find much of it shut because they’d actually had rain on Friday, making many of the slopes very icy. They were doing their best to groom the ice up to make the slopes skiable, and other parts of the mountain were open so we headed over to Pico to spend a few hours on the smaller slopes there.

After a hearty lunch, we made our way over to Killington again where it was all opened by now. The snow conditions weren’t at all great and you had to play “dodge the ice patch” all over the place, but we managed to stay in one piece.

The hotel we chose had a good games room that included a shuffleboard table. We were very competitive at this when we went to Banff in Canada so we were pleased to find a table here. Annalie was a bit of a shark at it in Canada but her form has deserted her over the last couple of years so Ian beat her royally. She kept the darts close though ;)

Although there was no new snow by Sunday morning, the conditions were 100% better than Saturday because they’d been making tonnes of snow overnight in the cold temperatures. It was still very hard packed underneath, which made for unpredictable runs, but it was still better than before.

One of the most notorious runs at Killington, a double black diamond called Outer Limits, is usually a complete mogul field, not the best when you’re on a snowboard so we’ve always avoided it. But with the major snowmaking operation and some skilled grooming, it had become pretty flat. So we decided to give it a go. We both had reasonable runs with Annalie only having a “sit down” and no other major tumbles to report.

The rest of the day was spent messing about on the same mountain, but mainly sticking to blues, with the odd black thrown in. We did manage to accidentally find a mogul field but luckily the edge was pretty flat so we could stick to that, although it was a bit tight. And on one deserted green run, we managed to run into (not literally!) a cute little chipmunk sat in the middle of the piste! When Ian went in for a closer look, the little mite got a bit scared and scrambled back down his hole.

All in all it was a very enjoyable weekend that was relaxing and gave us both some deserved rest from our individual studies.

Ian has been busy with his Fire Academy and had his first practical session last Saturday. It was teaching them how to use the breathing apparatus properly so they were running around the yard, mock houses and confined spaces with air tanks and masks. He managed to impress his instructors with his ability to consume half the air everyone else needed on one exercise!

There’s also been a few days’ work for Ian. He had his first pick-up from Newark, which is a nightmare to get back from, especially during Friday night rush hour. Not only that but there was a torrential downpour at the time and Americans have an even greater inability to drive in the wet! So that meant his journey home took twice as long as normal, making a total of fours hours instead of two.

This week ahead Ian starts his FAA ground school, which is part of the training required for his pilot licence. Now he’s earning his own pennies, he wants to start taking flying lessons to get qualified, just so he can take Annalie for lunch to Cape Cod, or somewhere similar ;) or so he says!