Anybody can ski downhill.....

Here's old CJ "skinning up to the Bump Shack at Summit at Snoqualmie ski area, Washington State, with his cherished one and only close behind snapping her pictures..... Great three shift weekend wearing the red jacket... at two different ski areas...did two backboards, two knees, and taught some rescue tobogganing skills to some eager-eyed young recruits.... I have a full life. With something important to do, the winter flies by, and I'm as happy in my life as I have ever been, even at seventy long years. I believe more than ever that we must find something important to do, something that is seen by others to be important, to maximize both the length and quality of our lives. For you flatlanders ............... (A bump shack at a ski area is at the top of the hill, where the toboggans, trauma packs, traction splints, and spine boards are kept, along with a patroller ready to be dispatched to any area of injury.....the term evolved from the time when the ski patroller simply stood at the top, and would be "bumped" off by another patroller coming up the lift. After about a half century, somebody got the bright idea that a shack in which to keep out of the weather might be nice! "Skins" are long pieces of nylon with a one-way nap that are applied to the bottom of the skis in order to allow climbing up rather than sliding down. Red and I try to climb up the hill at least once during my shifts, to give the heart and lungs a therapeutic workout.... Thus ends my mini-ski patrol lesson........! ) I love skiing and I love ski patrolling, but Friday I spent some time with my motorcycles, both of them silent, still, hooked up to their battery monitor IVs, and the Great Plains of America are beginning to call me again..... "Come! Come, my child-man! My flowers will soon be blooming, my grasses swaying... Come! Come and let us once again visit the prayer wheels of the Northern Cheyenne!" Soon I will be longing for summer, and for the plains of North America, plains once crossed over in covered wagons by my ancestors... I believe

I can do one more crossing! At least one!