Haven't been on downhill skis in years. Though my wife and I strapped on our x-country skis (alpine or nordic, I can't recall) and had a blast the other day.

 

It was a BLAST!!! Definitely time for some new sticks, though! Been on the same skis for more than 12 years, so I think I'm buying myself some new ones as a late Christmas/early birthday gift...

 

Oooh, great Brant. How far do you have to go to hit the slopes?

 

A little over an hour away from my boss' place is a nice resort, Crystal Mountain. Now I just have to drive an hour north to my place after I have some dinner.

 

That's really not too bad! Nice that you can blow off a few hours and get some slope time in!

 

Skiing

I broke one of the buckles on my ski boots last year in Whistler (fonrtunately on the last run of the last day) . Anyway, took it in to get it fixed here and, to cut a long story short, they didn't have the parts to fix it, so gave me a new pair of boots and charged me US$16 which would have been the cost of the repair if they had the parts top service

 

If I broke a buckle on my boots I'd be screwed...they only HAVE one buckle!!!

 

Do you have any place to ski, James?

I think I read in Popular Science that there's an indoor skiing place in Japan??? Is that true?

 

There is an indoor ski place on the way out to the airport, but I heard that it is closing down. There is a ski resort about 20 minutes from our "mountain house", which my wife is going to this weekend .... I am away so can't go

There are places that you can get to by train from Tokyo in about 1 hr, but they tend to get VERY busy, somewhere about 2 hrs away seems to be okay, since you don't get many people going for just the day ....