Wolves, small children, and insanity

I guess I'll post the trip stats even though this road trip is concluded.
Miles: 14704.8
Gallons Burned: 484.1
Caffeinated Drinks: 88
Gigabytes of Pictures: 33.5

I also feel compelled to admit one thing before I continue, I have been reading "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac for the first time so I may exhibit a certain violence/exuberance in my writing; you all have my apologies.
After catching up with my aunt and uncle and eating an amazing squash dish that kept getting better as I had it for leftovers, I slept poorly waking often to odd and unpleasant dreams.
I was determined to catch a little skiing on my road trip as it had been 20 months since my last alpine adventure involving rapid descent (rather different from my long and grueling hikes up Mt. Rainier to Camp Muir at 9,550 ft).
Zoom out to see just how awesome it really is:

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Anyhow I set out back up I-26 toward the Appalachian "Mountains" (Honestly these hills are often given far too much credit. They are nice for a Sunday drive but surely do not bear the one critical element that makes a mountain a mountain, namely the tendency to create widows). I await Jen or Alicia's rebutal, you see they have done something like 1,500 miles of the long Appalachian trail and they can tell of the extreme exertion required to defeat such terrain. Check out their cool story, it's the last link in my "Websites!" section.
Oh right! So I drove north but due to my lack of intel, I didn't know exactly where to go, so despite "the" stereotype I stopped and asked for directions to Sugarloaf Mountain. The oldtimer at the gas station looked at me confused. He asked if I wanted directions to skiing. I answered in the affermative, he relaxed as said why not go up to the Wolf? "It's only 15 minutes away."
Excited to be so close to powder I thanked the man and left with after purchasing a sandwich for later.
Much later I realized that Sugarloaf is actually the best skiing in Maine, not North Carolina.
So I valiantly drove north up to the Wolf. I drove a slow road into the mountains that dead ended in a resort community, back tracking I found my error and returned to the correct path. I skidded into the parking lot of a ski rental shop my parking was as follows (Notice the precision of my diagram):

The whole lot was covered in about 6 inches of snow, so I just rammed the car into the lot and let her be where she stopped. I grabbed some shorter skis (its been a little while so cut me some slack).
I managed to push my Jolly Green out of the lot with only 15 minutes work.
Once at the lifts, I paid for the really cheap lift tickets and hopped up the mountain on their one working chair lift. On my second lift ride I met a middle aged man on the lift who was an executive for some southeastern grocery store; then I met a pair of giggling stoners. The next ride was taken alone as were the next three rides.
After getting my snow legs back, I felt like a break was called for. I pulled over here and unpacked the back pack that Uncle Steve let me borrow:

I ate a fine roast beef sandwich, two Hershey bars, two wheat and cheese cracker packs, a quart of water, and some raisins all while enjoying the view.
After the next run, I joined a solo skier who was in line for the lift. His name was Tristan. He came out to ski with his mom, but she didn't want to ski so this 10 year old kid was braving the slopes alone even though this was only his second time skiing. I felt a kinship with this kid; we in our own unique ways were loners experiencing the purest form of solitude: being alone in a crowd (okay second purest form of solitude, the purest being locked away in your car for 12,404 miles to wrestle with your true self, equivalent to two weeks of solitary confinement in prison). So I hung out with Tristan. He was a great kid. I would be proud of my son if he was half the young man Tristan is at the same age. He held himself well and was fearless, he took on the steepest slopes with a thirst for speed paralleled only by my own. He wanted to push the envelope on his ability on skis and he visibly improved with each run. I never had a little brother (that I grew up with), but Tristan would be awesome as a little bro. With his mother's permission here is Tristan:

After I had sharpened my ski skills, I filmed a long clip of me skiing down from the top of Wolf Mountain to the bottom. It is the last clip in this little video project I made from my time on Wolf Mountain. Feel free to leave feedback(much love to the Go! Team who provided the music):

Next time I'll share more from Asheville...