Buy the fastest clothes you can,

And talk skiing like a man,
But don't let people get you on the slope!

In spite of my invoking the sacred memory of Super Skier, I attempted the Big Hill up at the university this morning and emerged unscathed. In the inscrutable manner of faceless minions everywhere, the trail groomer had done only one side of the hill -- turned off down a farm road at the top. But I followed the trail on, as others had boldly split that infinitive before me, and kept my feet underneath me and pointed in the right direction for the whole run.

No close encounters of the ungulate kind, though the deer had been tromping around on the trails a _lot_, no birds more interesting than a chickadee flock that decided to follow me for a couple of hundred yards through the woods, no ravens croaking omens at me as I climbed that hill. The snow presented a mixed bag, slipping and grabbing as I moved from sun into shadow -- temps were around 0 F last night and up to 30 F by the time I got back to the car. So the ski bottoms would get wet and then freeze. Not bad, just not perfect.

Apparently some town in northern Vermont got 5 feet of snow in 24 hours out of the latest storm.

1.5 hours, 8 miles +/-