Killington 2008/9 - Day 3

First day skiing
by guest writer Ciaran Hegarty (aka the greatest)

We get up at 6:30 Mike and me straight up, however Liam takes a bit more persuading. We have our breakfast of American cereal but for some pop tarts, which I can’t understand how, someone could eat or even hold! We head out to get our skis which is pretty boring so I’m not gonna talk about it.

We start with snowshed a great slope for beginners but still fun for hardcore skiers. This is just perfect for us because although we’re not hardcore skiers we are familiar with skiing so we go down snowshed still getting back our skiing legs as mum calls them. Mike races down getting his ski legs back straight away, but all the rest of us are still a bit nervous and so we take our time.

By the time me, mum, dad, and Liam reach the bottom of snowshed we all decided to do it again so we did except this time on the lift up I start to complain about the way I can’t parallel ski but Mike, Mum and dad can. So on the way down Mike slowly teaches me tricks of how to parallel ski, and not to boast (well maybe just a little) in 3 to 5 minutes I’m parallel skiing. So going down concentrating on paralleling I take about 10 to 16 hours on getting down to the bottom.
Seeing as we’re all at the bottom of snowshed by the greatest waffle house in the world we buy waffles. Now I could go on forever explaining about the waffles (which was the main reason I wrote this blog) so I think you’d prefer if I skipped this bit. After our heavenly terrifically sweet waffles that are so………- 6 months later – I could eat a hundred of and which have just the right amount of……….- 8 months later – that just are made to perfection, oh sorry did I drag on sorry what I meant to say was after we had our amazing waffles we decided to do a trail called the great eastern. So to get there we take the snowshed express quad up and take a track called the highlander which takes us straight to the K1 gondola that leads us to Killington peak so we take what we know as the great eastern which we do every year when we notice none of the signs say were going down great eastern. So we stop at the next map and see that they’ve changed the great eastern and just about screwed everything up! So in our disgrace we decided to go to our favourite restaurant called Noel’s so we take the trail that leads us there.

Unfortunately the so called “snow” on this trail was icy and a word me and mike invented it’s called snice, as in snow and ice and also as in it’s nice which it really isn’t nice but still. The snice gave me a problem it made my skis cross which meant I wasn’t controlling the skis. By the time we reached Noel’s I was tired and grumpy so we went in and ate. At Noel’s they have paper over the table and they give you some crayons and well these are some that I drew:

After we had our delicious lunch we decided to find the quickest way home and the way to do that meant that we’d have to take a lift up then take a trail to the bottom of bear mountain, (see map) then take juggernaut down to skyeship and take the gondola up, and then after that we had to take the northbrook quad up to snowshed and then ski down and bam right next to the hotel. Now you don’t need to look at the map to see that’s a long way home, but unfortunately the only other way home was to take blue runs which no one was up for. Seeing as Liam was really tired and really grumpy (if Liam’s reading I meant to say a bit and to the readers WINK WINK) we took the green way only to find that at the bottom of Bear Mountain that the juggernaut was closed. This made Liam a tiny – cough cough, a lot more, cough cough- bit more grumpy but luckily there was another route we go a lift that leads us to the top of Skye peak and then we take down “the great eastern” to the Northbrook crossover and then from there we carry on with the original plan. On the lift up me and mum had a talk with a woman who said a mountain ambassador told her that because on Saturday and Sunday it rained Monday would be I-C-Y and unfortunately our first day skiing was Monday. So we started the “the great eastern” only to find that it was steep and I-C-Y (don’t add comments asking why does he say I-C-Y instead of icy please just don’t) so this made Liam a little bit more o heck I’m not gonna lie it made him as grumpy as a cat who had just been eaten by a giant ice cream cone that is friends with a giant bucket of peas with 3 eyes 2 mouths and 1 pig nose and a donkey for a tail! After 99 years 99 months 99 fortnights 99 weeks 99 days 99 hours 99 minutes 99 seconds and 99 milliseconds of Liam stopping then skiing for a minute then stopping for 10 then skiing for 1 then… we reached the bottom of the Northbrook crossover.

So you’d think Liam would be pleased that he only had to go up one more lift, down one more slope, across one more bridge and walk through one more door to get to the hotel but no instead he has to sit down. So mum me and mike go up the lift and do snowshed a couple of times and then that’s the end of my story about skiing that day.

My final conclusion of that day is skiing is great, Liam is silly, waffles are great and blue whales should wear hats.

Killington 2008/9 - Day 2

And on to Killington
by Clare Hegarty

Sleep is a great healer and tiredness ensured that the boys didn’t even object to sharing a double bed. The hotel was a familiar one and the breakfast lived up to its memory. At least we had the car outside so that we could get straight on with the last leg of our journey.

We had in mind a beautiful town in Vermont called Woodstock, which we had passed through many times but never stopped. Woodstock has that picture perfect New England look to it, particularly at this time of the year. It has beautiful architecture and is completed with snowdrifts at the side of the road and wreaths on all the doors. We lucked out with our choice of restaurant with Bentleys, which was having a jazz brunch, an unusual pair of musicians, a saxophonist and a guitarist, something to give Mike & Ciarz some ideas! The food was good too and the two pints of local beer just finished it off and me!

We’ve become so familiar with Killington now that everything about the journey is part of tradition. First, we pass Bill & Blanche’s Pancake House (usually a stop but not this time), then the first view of the ski slopes (again usually lots of oohs & ahhs but this time concern about the lack of snow) and finally the smell of the hotel lobby, a mixture of the wood fire and snow dampened carpets drying out.

It’s our fifth time in this hotel, so although the rooms are almost identical, we are quickly able to identify the differences and assess their positive or negative implications – a bit like a spot the difference competition. For the record, this room has good artwork, lots of chairs and a good view of the slopes, but it is a long walk from the pool and even a longer walk at the end of the day with aching muscles and heavy ski boots.

Another essential part of the Hegarty Family holiday is the pool. There is nothing quite like it. It is open air and heated to a degree that the condensation coming off in the cold air makes it difficult to see from one side of the pool to the other. Another hazard is that wet hair will freeze so hard that your head aches, so once your hair is wet, you have to frequently immerse yourself in the bath warm water to melt your head and keep comfortable. If the pool isn’t warm enough for you, there is the scalding hot Jacuzzi, which is my favourite place to chat and to observe the stars. Boys being boys, they of course prefer to play who can stand on the side of the pool longest with the added variation of who can rub icy snow on their bodies before jumping back in the pool!

Killington 2008/9 - Day 1

The journey - would you do it for £2,800?

by Clare Hegarty

(Ed's note: Well of course you would, its a no-brainer! Except that lots of families offered it before us said no, so what was the catch?)

(2pm GMT) The offer seemed innocuous enough to start with; delay our journey for one hour for £560 each. Oh but the flight wasn’t direct, we would have to fly to Washington Dulles and change to an internal flight to Boston. The thing was the flights hadn’t cost us that much to start with, but the hotel bill was going to be astronomical with the low pound, so it was very tempting as and we succumbed to it. There is no such thing as a free lunch and ours wasn’t, we had £25 towards it but we had to hold onto our bags while we ate it.

We struck a deal with the boys, £100 for each of them and £2,500 towards our summer holiday. We cheered them up with thoughts of seeing the airport where Die Hard 2 was based, how they would spend their share of the money and on the thought that we might not get called up.

We were called, so our paths were set, but an upgrade was promised which cheered us up immensely.

(5pm GMT) The flight was very comfortable with extra legroom and spare seats to spread out.

(12:30 GMT 7:30pm ET) The arrival at Dulles was shocking, standing at immigration for an hour to be admitted, we were the last group from the plane but then this was dead time.

(2:00am GMT 9:00pm ET) The immigration officer was charming as ever but I couldn’t get over the incongruity of the large tough looking black man who was called Hyacinthe. The hour wait had broken Ciaran’s spirits – he needed food fast and an Obama golf ball fast apparently. Mick provided most of the entertainment for us by calling the car company to explain that we wouldn’t be picking the car up today but tomorrow. He explained it so nicely and patiently but put the phone down muttering about “missiles having been launched” and “still need to pick up car tonight”.

The flight was delayed and spirits would have been low had we not spent the time worrying about Sydney and what the alternative would have been like – if we had taken her skiing! We imagined everything from strapping four little mini-skis on to her feet, her first sights and smells of snow and of course her skiing down a gentle slope. The flight delay announcements were made more charming by the indeterminate species of the creature making them.

(11:00pm ET 4:00am GMT) We’re on the plane! Could have been the best plane in the world, could have been the worst – I slept for the entire 90 minutes

(12:30am ET 5:30am GMT) We’re in Boston only 5 hours later than planned, but like they said in Outnumbered airport hours are like days in the outside world.

Mick and I are seasoned travellers, able to adapt our arrangements, so we’d failed with the car but we had switched our hotel reservation from one about an hour North of Boston to one at the airport, so the plan now was to split up, Mick to pick up the car and the rest of us to get the courtesy bus to the hotel. That didn’t work, we were still waiting for our bus when Mick had collected the mini-van and was able to pick us up (1:30 EST 6:30am GMT).

The benefits of SatNav are huge, no matter how strange and unfamiliar the surroundings, you can find you way around with complete independence.
In this case we were able to find our way from the airport (A) to 85 American Legion Highway, Boston (B) and then to 85 American Legion Highway, Revere (C) – which is where our hotel was. It is a credit to us all that we didn’t explode.

(2:30am EST 7:30am GMT) Oh the joy of lying horizontally and sleeping………………..

So would you?