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New Year's Weekend Style. . .

 





A stylishly snowy skiing weekend (Say THAT three or four times in rapid succession!) during the tail end of the Christmas season.  We had so much fun on the 2nd, and The Young Master did so well, that we have booked a place up north for a 3.5 day skiing weekend later in the month.  

Even more than road cycling, there is simply nothing like cross-country skiing.  The stress simply melts away after a few hours schussing through the woods, across the fields, up rises, and down the hills.  Likewise, there is nothing quite like that calm, centered, very relaxed, warm feeling at the end of a day's ski tour.  

I'd happily indulge five days a week for half the year weather permitting.  If only I could get The Grand Duchess to go to Michigan Tech in Houghton-Hancock up on the Keweenaw Peninsula.  We spent a couple of weeks exploring up there during Summer 2007.  Great country, but remote.  To say the least. 

Coincidentally, before they decamped for Asheville, North Carolina early in the 20th century, where my maternal grandmother and later ol' Mom were born and grew up, one set of great grandparents and two great aunts lived for a time further up the road in Calumet, Michigan where Great Grandfather Roberts sold LARGE mining equipment to the various companies that used to mine copper and other ores in the Upper Peninsula.

How funny-peculiar (as opposed to funny-haha) that I ended up back in Michigan.

-- Heinz-Ulrich

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