Back at Soda Springs

Aging is brutal. Everyday you wake up, there is one more wrinkle on your face and you are one day closer to death. My memory is getting worse too. Not that it was any good before, but now I can't remember any word in the crossword puzzle that I did the night before unless I make an effort to memorize. It's all downhill.

But then, there are senior discounts and they make everything seem alright again. Take Soda Springs season pass, for example. After the disastrous 5-months long PEM struggle from skiing too much last season, I wasn't planning to buy a season pass this year. I was going to make do with day tickets when they become cheap and ski just a few days like I did in 2018-19 season. But Soda Springs had season tickets for seniors only for $59 and I wasn't the one to pass up that kind of bargain.

How I perk up at the sight of white snowbank. It's the same story: Annoying fatigue and ache all over while driving up, and then they melt away as I walked up the bank to get to the ticket window. Novelty Effect must be still there.

I skied harder than I planned. What else is new, right? But the slopes of Soda Springs are short, so the damage was minimal. The black run was only about 200 meters long, only a fraction of Sugar Bowl's Disney or Lincoln, and I went up there only once. Nonetheless, I totally crapped out on Saturday, two days after skiing. Then I totally bounced back on Sunday, so it wasn't a PEM; it was a normal fatigue from the first day of the season. 

2 days after that, however, I crashed. I went for a walk while charging the car near Land Park. It was a Spring-like day in the 70s and I walked a little further up the park than I intended, for total of 1.5 miles. The next day I keeled over and PEM lasted for 3 days. So, it appears that the skiing weakened me and walking while weakened put me over the top. 

Dunno yet how the season will go. Last season resulted in a PEM struggle of 5 months because either 1) I skied on black runs in the second half of the season, or 2) the Novelty Effect dissipated after a month and I continued to ski without the lift from it. I'll refrain from going on the black runs this season and see how it goes. If I again suffer from PEM in the Spring, then I'll blame it on the fading Novelty Effect. If I manage to avoid, then it must've been skiing the black runs that caused the long PEM last season.