Back in NYC...

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(One Slip on ice

One sledging accident)

I came back into NYC, from my little trip to a cabin in the woods. The cabin as you saw from my previous post was beautiful; the guy who planned the trip did really well. I had an awesome time simply taking photographs and wandering around. Being a proud city person, I can honestly say it was nice to be cut off from everything for a couple of days. The freezing cold shower when the pipes froze not such a fun time, take the good with the bad.

Vermont is known for its skiing at this time of year, and on long bank holiday weekends families and friends tend to go on out of state excursions. As most of us had not skied before we decided to find other activities to amuse ourselves with.

Getting overexcited with my camera, a couple of us followed a trail into the woods. The snow was lovely and powdery and generally fairly easy to walk in. The pond down the bottom of the stairs from the house was completely frozen and I was reminded of the scene in the mighty ducks when a younger coach Bombay is skating on the frozen lake. Considering it was snowing or had been snowing most of the time we were there it wasn’t nearly as cold as it had been in New York.

We choose to make dinner at home on the Saturday night and enjoy hanging in the cabin then everyone settled in, to watch ‘Cabin in the Woods’. I do not enjoy watching scary films at all, and largely I put this down to my overactive imagination and the pretty terrible experience of a week’s worth of nightmares after watching ‘Red Dragon’ when I was twelve. The film wasn’t that bad, but I wouldn’t recommend watching it either. Afterwards, I proposed watching ‘When Harry met Sally’ – you know to help combat the nightmares.

In the morning, some guys went out for breakfast and others went to play and do some sledding. I have never sledged before. I know it’s a surprise to me too. So I get on the sleigh board with bounds of enthusiasm and already mentally joining a sledge team, I try to steer the sledge so as to avoid the wooden post, at the bottom of the hill. The sledge actually goes straight for the post using my leg as a brake. My shin went thwack on the post and for a split second I thought I had broken my leg (specifically told not to do this by a work colleague). Instead I ripped my new jeans, and cut myself a little. My friend carried me back up the hill. My leg turned out to be pretty sore and I have a bruise covering most of my shin bone. This left me in a perfect state to sit and watch the NFL game between San Francisco 49ers and Seattle Seahawks. My friend is a huge fan of the Seahawks and has been following them since he was a kid. Luckily, for us Seahawks won the game and now in only the second time in their history they are through to the Super Bowl against the Denver Broncos. Starting ticket price is $2,300 up to $843,000. This truly is the biggest thing in American sport, I’m looking forward to it.

The absolute highlight of the trip has to be going to the Ben and Jerry’s factory, and picking up a free sample of Americone Dream. Go on get some! It really is true ice cream makes you really happy.

Vermont has a lot going for it, including lovely maple syrup. But for now, it’s back to NYC, “back to life and reality”.

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