Piksea could be Marianne Dashwood

One fall C decided that we should spend Thanksgiving weekend skiing in Vermont. We left Wednesday night and drove up to Killington. It was an 9 hour drive or so from central New Jersey on some of the emptiest roads I've ever traveled.

We woke up Thanksgiving morning to a rainy washed out ski resort. A check of the weather showed that it had snowed all night at Jay Peak. So, we packed up, hopped back into his car (the little black duck) and started north for Jay Peak.

We drove through the rain then on to dry, clear roads to snowy roads. Finally, as we headed up the mountain it started to snow and the roads were icy and visibility was dropping. We were hanging on and working our way up the mountain when we blew out a tire and went skidding all over the road. For a while I wasn't sure we were going to stop, and if it weren't for a post on the side of the road, we wouldn't have.

When the car finally stopped, thanks to the little road post, C got out. I was pretty much stunned into immobility. Over the hood of the car all I could see was a whole lot of nothing. There was a completely verticle slope and it dropped down really far. There was a house on the driver's side at the bottom of the slope. C came around to the passenger's side and we looked at each other shocked, through a big spider web with pieces of my hair in it that neither of us had noticed until then. While he was scared by the realization that my head struck the windshield with enough force to smash it, I felt guilty because I broke his windshield... with my head. It took me a little while to comprehend what happened.

C put the donut on and we continued on. We checked into the hotel/inn, whatever it was at Jay Peak. We had a nice Thanksgiving dinner before he spent the night watching over me. By then I had a pretty bad headache and a possible concussion. We always had plenty of those little travel games with us and I'm sure he won quite a few games of Scrabble and Othella a little easier than he would have suspected possible that night, at least. After, he spent most of the night making sure that whatever might happen to concussed people didn't happen to me. He was my very own Colonel Brandon and I didn't even actually have to fall down a hill.

On a more practical note, the skiing was horrible. Just because they get a foot of snow in the mountains you shouldn't necessarily try skiing on them. There's a very good reason for wanting a 60+ inch base. Rock skiing is no fun and not very healthy for your skis.