Winterplace

Our youth group piled in the vans on Friday afternoon and headed out to West Virginia to go skiing at Winterplace Resort. We had barely made it out of Atlanta when the van I am in starts vibrating and shaking... The side mirror blew off, the plastic casing of the mirror was beating against my window, and Shad (very calmly considering...) started pulling over 2 lanes of traffic to the shoulder. After we were stopped, we found out the front right tire had blown and the tread had knocked off the mirror. I am very thankful Shad kept control of the van so well and got us safely to the side of the road... NO WRECKS.

The girls in our van "scared" from the tire blowing off.

Lucky for us, we had some very handy men around to change the tire... Even if it did take all four of them.


Yes, I had my camera out documenting this entire thing... And while watching this whole thing, I had to ask them... Okay, how many men does it take to change a tire, really?

"Apparently four-- plus one woman with a camera." Well said, Derek... I had to wait and catch a picture of this on the way home (too dark on the way there), but right where we blew a tire, there was an entrance ramp from an exit that had this billboard... Oh, the humor...


We finally made it to La Quinta in Bristol, VA... No more problems, thank God... And though it took a while for me to sleep (too much adrenaline, still)... we all were asleep pretty fast. Saturday morning came all too quickly, and I met Shad in the morning to give him my Garmin to send him to Wal Mart to get new tires. The spare, though a good tire, is 13 years old. We didn't want to see how much trouble we could get into, so Shad bought 2 new tires (replaced both front ones). After another couple of hours on the road, a quick lunch, unloading bags at the hotel (which, by the way, the hotel was a mess in and of itself!) and renting gear, we finally made it to the slopes. Well, except for Shad who went to the Wal Mart in VA to get 2 more tires for the back... Bless him. I was eager to get on the mountain, so my camera didn't find its way out of my bag until that night... Here are a few. Check out the slopes in the first picture!


Derek & me before dinner...


Lei & me... Sam & me...

After a quick dinner, we skied (or snowboarded) until 9:30. I met up with Chip (an advanced skier) and his son Michael (a first time snowboarder). They were going down more of the same runs that I enjoyed (verses more challenging ones that the above group were going down). It was a lot of fun getting to know them. At 9:30 we headed back to the hotel... Although the lobby and upstairs of the hotel on the first trip (earlier that afternoon) was enough to make my nose bleed... Our rooms were great, or at least mine was, and I didn't have to deal with cigarette smoke at all! Again, after a quick night's sleep, we were back on the slopes on Sunday.

I decided to take a private ski lesson on Sunday, and I am OH SO GLAD I DID! So many people were saying "you know how to ski, so why are you taking a lesson?" ... I can ski, meaning I can get down the mountain kind of gracefully... but I want to ski skillfully, and I'm well on my way to doing so after my lesson on Sunday. My instructor's name is Mike, and he was fantastic! He was a great teacher, very positive, and a lot of fun. We talked about my past skiing endeavors, which led to me talking about ski ministries. He is also a Christian, he told me, and took a lot of interest in the Host Ministries stuff I do in Gatlinburg. After my hour of instruction was up, I had the option to buy another lesson... but nearing the end of my lesson (though it was great!) I didn't think I was going to. After making our final run (which was SO fun thanks to all of Mike's help!) I told him I changed my mind. We spent another hour skiing, and when that was over, he told me he'd pay for my 2nd hour... How nice!! And what a real treat.

Kelsey, Amber, me, Lei, and Kelly

After my lesson, I headed back out on the slopes. I skied with Derek, Lei, Sam, David, Kelsey and some other college-aged people for a bit before running into Chip and Michael again at the lodge. One of the youth, Laura, came back out with me, Chip, and Michael and we had a lot of fun on the blues (intermediate slopes) and greens (beginner slopes). We definitely stayed away from the blacks (expert slopes), but I was just fine with that. Remember how I said I am not an adrenaline junkie? I was just fine putting into practice what I learned on greens and blues without trying to tackle blacks. Here's a couple pictures that we took on Sunday...


Laura, me, and Michael


Chip, me, and Laura

We had a good time... Sunday night we went to Ryan's for dinner... not my favorite restaurant, but I really enjoyed that fried okra... :-) Outside, Shad took a quick picture of everyone that was in our van... Poor guy had 6 girls!

Anna, Laura, Morgan, me, Kelsey, and Deanna

Monday morning, it was get up and get on the road early!! We stopped in Knoxville to have lunch at the food court... so I had a couple friends meet us there! Jacob and Laura both surprised Shad, which was fun, and it was great to have lunch with them!

When we were within 5 miles of the church, someone called to alert us to our back left tire being very low... Seriously?! We stopped and put 2 rounds of air in it... then after the air shut off, we still heard air... What?! Apparently the little knob that you use to put air in the tire was not attached properly to the tire... Shad and I looked at each other and he said, "Let's go!" We both jumped in the van and made it back to the church safely! Someone will be taking that tire back to Wal Mart!! Overall, it was a very eventful trip to say the least!