My 18th Birthday and the Draft and....the Police - 1967
This image is the Huron High School Arena, the gymnasium for the schools and now the conference center. Not my favorite place at all.
Posts
January 1977 - Learning to Ski Part II
In The Beginning At dinner in the Common Room that first night we'd reunited with the Jersey firefighters and learned where we should go the next day...where the beginners go. Earlier in the day we'd looked at the map and it was overwhelming. I don't remember how many mountains and ski lifts and lodges and on and on and on there were, but it was a lot. Fortunately, the bunny slope was just a short walk from our house. The slopes opened around 9 if I remember correctly. We had our hard rolls and coffee, got my skis and headed for the slopes. We arrived at a very busy place, one that we didn't understand at all. Rocky found a place to rent boots and skis. I figured out how to put my boots on. The Exchange had put on the binders and showed me how to click my boots into them so I felt ready! We asked where the bunny slope was although we felt we could probably skip that, after all, we were in our late 20s and in reasonably good shape! The snow was deep, probably two feet o...
January 1977 - Learning to Ski Part I
The Planning This should have been easy, find a place with snow and a hill, get the equipment, ski. Should have been. Wasn't. I need to rewind the clock a few months. I lived in Iceland, on a small Air Force radar station lovingly called "Rockville." To call the place barren would have been kind; remote and barren and lonely and cold is better. Almost everyone stationed at "The Rock" was on a remote tour, that is, without family. I'd arrived on the island in July '76. Traditionally halfway through the year-long tour people took a month's leave and went someplace exciting...usually back to the states to visit family. I'd just gone through a bitter divorce and wasn't keen on going stateside. My best friend on the island was Robert (Rocky) Carter, a.k.a. Starsky, he'd arrived on station about the same time as I. He was also newly single. Sometime in October or November we began talking about where to go and what to do on our mid-tour leave...