Finally! It was gorgeous today — 20 degrees, blue skies, and most important, almost no wind. I mean, a normal breeze, but not like the last several weeks where every time you go outside you feel like you’re getting punched in the head.

So this afternoon Raymond-the-dog and I went up to Suce Creek for my Favorite Skiing Expedition. As far as I’m concerned, the Suce Creek road is the perfect ski — a mile and a half uphill, you get all warm and out of breath, then you get to turn around and race your dog back downhill on very old wooden cross-country skis with no edges, on an icy, rutty road, while Ray sometimes panics and sits down in the road in front of you. It’s very exciting. If you’d told me when I was a real ski bum in my 20s that this would seem like Very Big Fun in my 40s, I’d have been horrified, but it is.

And in an hour and a half or two hours we’ve been outside, we’ve gotten our lungs full of fresh air and sunshine, we’ve had some exercise and a little adventure and listened to the birds in the trees and there’s still time to do many other things in our day.

My favorite ski. Just beautiful. Happy happy.