days skied at vail/beaver creek, Colorado: 4
vertical feet: over 75000
free chocolate chip cookies ingested: 3 (two at beaver “not roughing it” creek, one on airplane)
degrees below zero it was while we skied on tuesday: 15
degrees below zero it was while we skied on wednesday: 20
injuries: 1 (a burn on my wrist)
hot tubbed in -15 degree weather: yep
pub trivias won: 1
money saved by bringing tea bags on the mountain: $11.25
resourcefulness of pete and kelly: 173
generosity of pete and kelly: 746
german cities powered: only 13
amount pete and I talked about code on the mountain: nonzero
moguls enjoyed: at least half of them
and now I will interrupt this list format to talk about moguls.

Moguls are these big bumps (ranging in size from a breadbox to a subaru) that appear on ski hills after some snow falls and a bunch of people ski on them.  If the resort runs their big grooming machines over the mountain, it flattens all the moguls.

Moguls make skiing more difficult.  Small ski areas tend to groom most of their hills.  Large resorts groom maybe half?  As a result, you really only get to ski moguls at big resorts.  And moguls are awful when they’re icy anyway.

Moguls demand different technique.  On a groomed hill, you can ski in big loping turns.  But on moguls, these bumps are in the way, so you have to make these tight little turns.  Here’s an example.  (I mean, minus the crazy jumps.)

Anyway, every time I ski (all like 3 or 4 days each year), I get frustrated that I’m not good at moguls, and I try to ski them anyway, and I feel kind of clumsy. But I think I’ve finally gotten good enough that I enjoy an average mogul hill, can make it down safely, and if it’s kinda shallow or has nice snow or I’m just really on, I can have a lot of fun in it.  I can ski moguls and look pretty good.  And before you accuse me of shallowness, let me substitute “experience flow” for “look pretty good.”

That’s really what I’m trying to do, anyway: experience flow.  I’ve been worrying “I’m not improving at skiing” and then meta-worrying “why am I worrying about how good I am at skiing?” and that’s the answer.  At low skill, it’s fun, at high skill it’s fun, and in between it’s a sometimes-boring plateau.  So finally, I think I’m past that plateau.

TODO(dantasse): think about how this applies to other parts of my life, and if I’ve learned anything about perseverance from this experience.

In the meantime, hooray!