Skijoring in Spring

Got some speed up now
Originally uploaded by surferdwa.

Tiffany, Nikki, and I went up to Aspen Vista last night for a last hurrah before Tiffany is laid out for a couple of days and severely restricted on her activity for 3 weeks for her Neuroma surgery.

Here are the much requested photos of BOTH Nikki and I skijoring, not just Nikki's butt and a tow line. As always, more at my Flickr site (click on the photo).

We had a grand time until the snow ran out. And to think that Nikki and I were up here 4 days ago with 12" of fresh. Now it is the bottom of the barrel, but still Fun!

Break trail Nikki!

Break trail Nikki!
Originally uploaded by surferdwa.

It has been snowing for the last three days here in Santa Fe, and I have been working 14-16 hours a day. This morning the snow stopped and so did I. I loaded up Nikki, my AT gear, and the skijoring harness to do a couple of laps at the Santa Fe ski basin.

After coming to a complete stop on an particularly icy incline and having to back down the road for a running start, Nikki and I stopped at Aspen Vista rather than trying to push up to the ski basin. We harnessed up and took off up the road. For a while the trail was already broke, but we quickly ventured farther than anyone had that morning and Nikki was breaking trail for us.

We made almost made it to the ski area, but when we got out of the trees (just ahead in this photo) the drifts became too deep and Nikki was too tuckered out to go bounding through them. I tried putting her behind me and breaking trail, but she would have none of that and would just bulldoze along beside me and then she flopped on top of my skis so I couldn't go any further. Probably a good thing because going further would have made it an "Epic" rather than just a nice day out. (Click through to Flickr to see Nikki telling me it was time to go home)

We had some beautiful tree skiing with knee deep powder in most places. I would take 5 or 10 turns and then wait for Nikki to come bounding down following my turns. We got back to the Aspen Vista road and I hooked her back up for the final mile to the car which we made short work of. 5 hours later and we were back home, Nikki passed out on the sunny flagstone and me on the couch.

What a great day.

Camping in

Camping out
Originally uploaded by surferdwa.

Tiffany and I got our new tent from REI the other weekend. Our dividend + $10 and we're ready for the outdoors! Except it was snowing, so we decided to setup and camp in the living room. A couple of puppies, two pints of ice cream, and Transformers makes for a pretty good night.

The next morning the fur poked their heads in to wake us up, so it was a pretty good night's sleep!

It has been about 10 years since I've had a tent (and then it was actually Dad's tent). Tent technology has changed a lot. The poles are amazing, two doors so no more crawling over people, you can actually just put up the rain fly and ground cloth together as a light weight shelter. One of the things I use to hate about tents was all the useless space right were the sides met the floor. This tent has a good two feet of pure vertical there making it much roomier. It's pretty awesome. I'll get back with a full report when we take it for our first outside camping trip.