He has about 9,000 different pairs of skiis. There is one for deep powder. And another another for light powder. Another if there may be fat snow. Another for moguls. Another for valleys and yet another pair for short runs. (I exaggerate, but not by much...)
In the basement of their house in Atlanta, there was a room set up with the skiis and a table kitted out so he could clamp the skiis down and wax them and then scrape the wax off of them again.
On the wall next to the door, there was a bottle opener because skiing ---or even just getting ready to skiing--- and beers go together, natch.
Along one side of the room was a couch.
Most importantly, situated with a perfect view from the ski prep table, the couch and the doorway was a television where often some form of ski porn was kept on a constant loop.
And by ski porn, I do not mean snow bunnies getting busy to a boom chicka wah wah soundtrack, though there usually is some kicky horn based or electronica music soundtracking the footage.
I am referring to the kind of film that fills the dreams and wide screen televisions of diehard skiers everywhere. For the rest of us that do not fall into that category, this particular genre of porn usually involves a high-level skier, a helicopter and a mountain inaccessible by foot or ski-lift. (Or a snow-covered set of stairs)
(Also, to be clear, I am not kidding in the least...google "ski porn". At posting time, I clicked through the first five pages. And in those there was not one that contained anything other than fairly wholesome sports videos. I can't vouch past page six, but would bet it's pretty safe as well, though, kids, don't try it at home...)
As frequent visitors to the household, Husband and I would occasionally watch some of the ski porn with Rich and Kathleen. (Or more accurately, Kathleen and I would drink wine, gossip and sneak a cigarette or two after the kids went to bed while the guys watched the ski porn and discussed skiing or snowboarding, which is Husband's winter sport of choice. )
On one viewing, Husband recognized the location as Roldal, which is where we go skiing in Norway. It's the highest peak in the country and along with some great slopes, there is alot of "off-piste" (off peeeeste, which means off trail) area.
And that is where Husband is on his way right now to snowboard with friends and to take in the Roldal Freeride Challenge, which is much like a slightly smaller X-Games.
Again, nothing too too risque, just some guys doing flips and jumping off the sides of mountains. I think there is a rating system involved as well, but cannot be exactly certain.
We've been there before. Depending on how you catch the ferry, it's about 3 hours to the north of Stavanger into the fjord.
These are some of the scenes on the way....
(It's really amazing that over the course of a four-ish hour journey it's possible to see so many different landscapes. Norway is a gorgeous country and if you haven't been here, you really should pop over.)
This is where his journey will end...
I was supposed to be going along, but Lillie got rejected from the kennel because we've misplaced her shot papers. We suspect that she needs a few updates in any case.
She didn't seem really regretful when I broke the news to her this morning.
And Husband cares more about snowboarding than I care about skiing, so he loaded up and headed on out the door. It's the last weekend of the year, so there's no more boarding for a while, at least until the glacier opens next month.
Also sharp-eyed readers may note the sleeping bag in Husband's left hand. The hyette (cabin) is going to be stuffed with eight other people (That is the math after you subtract me.)
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