Inversions

It’s Sunday, January 20, 2013, the second consecutive day of this weather inversion.  We’ve had a few lately, and as with many other things, it’s best to be on top of them.  I was yesterday because I drove up through the blanket of grey over Vernon to Silver Star at 8:30am in order to be ready for Shea, the 8-year-old autistic girl I help with skiing.  The sun was shining there; the shroud of mist below formed an opaque lake through which the distant Monashee Range and all other high points of land rose like islands of dark rock and bright white snow.  It was magnificent and warm.  The class with Shea started out well, but she tired and refused to continue after just over an hour.  My friend and usual partner, Marie, was enjoying a visit from her son, so I worked with an older man who was convinced he could get Shea skiing right away, until she disabused him of the idea.  I made her hot chocolate, we wrote up our report and I was happy to join Marilyn, another instructor, for a few runs before lunch.  I descended through the mist and hoar frost of the inversion around 2:00pm and spent the rest of the day grocery shopping and doing house stuff in the grey.  Today I have stayed below, studying Korean, cooking, filling the bird feeder and shoveling what snow I could from the roof of the back porch.  Yes, FedEx finally delivered the tapes and now I’m cursing them for that because it means I have to stop thinking about and start actually studying Korean.  Actually, I’m enjoying it.  But it’s hard.  My brain hasn’t hurt like this in a long time, and the worst part is that whenever I feel I’ve cleared a path and placed some new words and phrases down, it seems as if the fog rushes back in like an inversion and obscures about 60% of it.  It’s worse than shoveling, but then I like shoveling too. 

This Friday night I volunteered at the Vernon Performing Arts Centre for the Montreal Guitar Trio (MG3) concert.  It was spectacular.  The audience went wild many times.  The men were not only talented, creative musicians but also very funny.  I’ve seen two  shows by Quebec artists in the past few months.  The Ballet Jazz de Montreal was also very good.  I have a friend from Montreal and work with a woman at Silver Star who is from Quebec, so I don’t feel so far from the Gatineau.

This week was a great leap forward for our trip to China.  Jay and I talked about it last week.  He told me that he has a friend who went to Beijing last year and gave him the card of a man who is a good guide there.   That inspired me to push on with the reservations of the flights and hotel.  For the latter, I did quite a bit of research on line.  I  narrowed it down to about 5 places and finally chose The Peking Yard Hostel.  I found it through Hostelworld.  It looks and sounds delightful.  We’ll see.  I decided when I was about 20 and heading to Europe that I was on a trip and wouldn’t sweat the small stuff.  It mostly worked then.  I’ll try to open up those same channels in my brain for this trip.  Last year in Korea was ‘all good’, so the Ross family motto, ‘Success breeds Hope’, encourages me.  

It's Monday now.  I woke up at 7:30 to the forecast of cloud in the Okanagan Valley.   Could it perhaps be an inversion?  I went to the Silver Star web cam page and saw pictures of the sun just rising behind the hills.  My pre coffee fog was instantly dispelled.  I would go skiing.  I didn't rush up because the temperature was about -6c, and as we haven't had fresh snow in about a week I knew the surface would be hard until the sun warmed it.  But I was eager enough to make it to the top for my first run before ten.   The drive through the mist and frost was beautiful, and bursting into the bright blue was--- A visiting Scot described the morning best when he said, "It's brilliant." .  I had lots of runs, took pictures and talked with people on the tow.

Three photos from the top of Silver Star showing the Monashee Mountains rising above the mist of the
inversion.