A big weekend for me in the

4/27/10 -- A big weekend for me in the Oregon Cascades:

Skiing powder Saturday on Mt. Hood. (That's me on the right, with my buddy Gary, a third grade teacher. Photo credit: Ethan Wilson, ER doc extraordinary.) We planned to climb that night, but checked the weather at 11:00 PM to find snow coming in sideways at 30 MPH. So we decided to sleep in only to discover . . .

. . . the storm had passed by morning and gifted us with blue skies. We grabbed gear and went out to play. Didn't summit (dangerous to be up high on a mountain late on a sunny day; avalanche potential gets high), but we had a great mountain experience just goofing around.

To top it all off we then snowshoed/hiked into a forest service lookout to spend the night.

True, you had to haul snow up in a bucket to melt for drinking water . . .

. . . but the view was worth it!

Today I flew across our beautiful country and am in Norwalk, Connecticut for an author visit at Cranbury Elementary. Life is busy, but I wouldn't have it any other way!