valentine's day

So I am not feeling particularly philosophical today. It is a bit cold, snowy, and windy, and as such I have opted out of my daily walk for today. But then again, I don't know how my body would respond to such a request today. Spent a great day skiing yesterday up at Stratton. The wife and I met up with my parents and my other skiing relatives. The weather cooperated nicely, providing plenty of sunshine and temperatures in the 20's.

In the morning, I led the way down a pretty nice bump run... of which the group who was with me were mostly not bump skiers, but they all faired well and survived the run. I ended up taking a pretty spectacular crash, clicking out of both skis simultaneously and performing a full mid-air somersault, but I walked away unscathed. It was shortly after this bump run that my feet started hurting pretty badly. Since there is an excellent custom boot fitter in the Stratton Mtn shopping village, during lunch I stopped in to see what they thought. Short version: my flexible feet were searching for support and not finding it, so they molded a custom footbed to replace the factory stock one. With new footbeds in place, my feet seemed to be much happier in the afternoon (and they had better been for the price). I even took an exceptionally long bump run to finish the day to test them out and my feet didn't bother me that much. They did hurt, but probably due to the fact that I tortured them in the morning. I actually felt more pain in my legs (quads to be specific) while going through the bumps, a testament to the additional exercise in that area I need and the fewer breaks I took in the bumps. Now the only thing left to complete my winter season is to get out on my snowboard!

Oh yeah, and its Valentine's Day... which I did know and was fully prepared for. Other than the thought of each day being commercialized, I actually think there should be a "Valentine's Day" more than once a year - maybe 4 times a year, one for every season. I would even go so far as to say once a month or more, because shouldn't we show our love and appreciation for those around us as often as possible?