Boston–Day 5

Tired of my trip posts yet? I’m almost done!

On our first full day in Boston we got up and got ready to brave the super chilly temps. Our wonderful hosts cooked us a delicious casserole for breakfast. After quite the task of finding me a pair of snow pants, a co-worker of Cody’s lent us a pair. What a nice woman to lend her pants to a complete stranger! However, they were several sizes too small. I SO wish I had pictures of Chloe and Laura trying to help me get into those pants! Haha!! It was absolutely hysterical, but we made it in! Well, almost. I was able to get the pants on, but not zipped or buttoned. Hmm…what’s a girl to do? Well, put bigger pants on over them! I ended up with long johns, snow pants, and cargo pants and felt like the kid from a Christmas story. “Wah I can’t put my arms down!”

So after that ordeal, we were ready! We were blessed with beautiful blue skies and teenish temps.

The plan for the day was to go snow tubing at Nashoba Valley in the morning, return to the house for lunch/chill out, and then go skiing at Wachusett’s Mountain for night skiing from 4-10. Busy, busy day but oh so fun!

So first up, snow tubing! I was SO excited we got to do this, as I knew it didn’t take skill and I was stoked about sitting and riding. We rented our tubes and then you sit in your tube and the attendant hooks you to the “tube lift” and it drags you to the top of the hill. I think we all got in trouble for something while we were there. “Sit in your tube!”, “No throwing snow!”, “Don’t lay on your stomach!”. Felt like we were in 2^nd grade, but it was a long slow drag up and there were too many opportunities to play around lol.

{Me, Chloe}

{Tube crew! – I seem to resemble Will Smith in the movie Hancock}

Once you finally get to the top, you pick a line, and wait for your turn. It was a lot like the water slides at a water park. Except much colder :) Then it’s time to go!

The tubes go super fast down the lanes! And every now and then your tube would spin. Going backwards + super fast + hard icy bumpers = scary fun! We eventually figured out which lanes had bumps – those were my favorite because you would hit them and get airborne! Ahhh so much fun.

We tubed for two hours, the length of our ticket and then headed home for lunch. On the way Laura pointed out an ice cream shop, and we had to stop lol.

We had sundaes and then went home to eat Brunswick Stew and leftover Chili.

Almost as soon as we got home and undressed from snow clothes, it was time to get ready to leave again.

We knew it would be super cold that night so we bundled up even more and we were off again!

We arrived at Wachusetts and bought our tickets, rented equipment, and got ready to do some skiing. Now this was the first trip I’d ever even seen snow, much less skied. My oh my, quite the sport!

Let me tell you about my skiing experience.

Skiing is scary.

Skiing is hard.

Skiing is fun.

Most of all skiing is scary.

Yep, that pretty much sums it up!

We finally got all of our equipment on, rented a locker and were ready to face the unknown. The mountain of death. Not really, but to me it felt like we were!

Also at this point I was sweating profusely, I mean I had at least 15 lbs. of clothes on and had done nothing yet besides fight with straps and skiis and hard-to-put-on boots.

{The girls getting ready to go up for the first time}

Okay, so first up. Find lift that’ll take you to the green hill. As in beginner’s hill. Find it? Check. Or so we thought…

We made our way to the lift, and all got on like pros. No face plants yet! It was a nice long scary ride to the top of the hill. Also, the girls were on our own lift the first time up, and didn’t realize we had a safety bar until about half way through the trip. Oops. We were so scared we were gonna fall out, and it would have been several stories to our certain death below! Then, we pulled the bar down. Er, first timers? Except Laura, who knew it was there all along lol. Anywho, we get to the top of the mountain, and the lift does not stump, it just dumps you off and you better pray to the good Lord above that you can make it to the level area at the bottom of the dump slope. First time off, we made it! Ahh! I know this is no large feat, but for real, if you have never even put on a pair of skis and then all of a sudden you have to immediately stand up and ski down a miniature slope, and you don’t fall, you’re excited! At least I was. Okay so now we’re at the top of the mountain and there’s no green hill to be found. Say wha? Okay so maybe that just means the Blue is the same as the Green. Must be, since it said there was green at the top, yet there’s only blue. So what does the inexperienced skiers that me and Chloe are, do? We just go of course! Mind you, no bunny slopes, no training, zip, nada, zilch. Annnnd we were scared out of our minds! We both ate it several times. Everyone else did very well, but we were new at this and we were so scared of smashing into the banks lined with trees, or going so fast down the hill that we couldn’t stop.

Eventually, we somehow managed to make it down in one piece. This continued for another round until we finally somehow managed to find the Green slope. Hallelujah to the snow Gods above! Oh my gosh, you mean to tell me this is where we were supposed to start? And we were on that goliath of a mountain instead?! Oh dear. So, needless to say after that those who wanted to pretty much stuck like glue to the green slope. It was by no means a bunny slope, but it wasn’t the treacherous track that the Blue was! Eek!

One time Chloe got stuck in a mogul (hard/challenging/icy slopes on the side of the paths). It was pretty darn hilarious. Except for the fact that she couldn’t get out. It was basically the sides of the path, and it was nothing but ice so she couldn’t get a grip. Laura and I were trying to get her out with our poles but it was to no avail. Finally she was able to make her way out, but we honestly thought it would be the end of her, right there on that Green mountain in Massachusetts. Haha.

{Chloe in the mogul}

{Laura the experienced skier!}

We skied for several hours and the temperature was about 5 degrees with the wind chill. It was the coldest I’ve ever been. Ever. Colder than cold I tell ya!

{On the lift – so cold!}

We often went into the lodge where we warmed up by the fire. Thank goodness for that!

{Lodge}

The boys and the more experienced Laura went off to do the harder courses, and me and Chloe stuck to what we liked and had gotten much better at. But for our second to last run, we decided to try our luck on the Blue again. Eek! I made it down slowly but surely, and Chloe made it down, but after a really bad spill to where the person working the slopes had to come help her up. Her confidence was hurt at that point because we’d been doing so good, so we decided to do one more run, and go to the Green for our last confidence boost. Well she did great, I on the other hand, had a stupendous wipe-out. Thankfully I didn’t break anything, but I did bruise up my knee real good. Oh well, battle wounds!

All in all it was a fabulous day…coming up next, our last day!