Good Snow, Great Food

This past weekend I was visited by a guest from Texas. His parents are missionaries in Japan who gifted Aaron with airline miles to visit Austria during his final spring break. To make things better God gifted the Alps with about a foot of fresh snow.
We spent two full days on the mountain and a bit of time hanging around Spittal; boarding, eating, chilling, and (for him) shopping. He bought the coolest, but most expensive, traditional German old-man hat (with feather). Awesome is all that can describe it, sorry I forgot to take a picture.


I'll admit that I too like to go with cool stuff, but mine has more function. Here's my super not-European about to ski look, a backwards hat, Nike pro running shirt, Under Armour cold gear mock. And this all gets covered by 20,000 mm waterproof Columbia outerwear. Oh yeah, and Burton GoreTex gloves. Call me what you want, but I'd prefer to call myself the warm, dry guy.
This photo is an attempt to respond to Dustin's super cool face shot I like to call 'turtle in a neon green jumpsuit.' My face hidden in the blue jacket just doesn't do the lime green justice.

Dustin talked me into buying these red lense Quicksilver goggles last year when he was working at GI Joes. Thank you Dust for some great advice, somehow the red filters light off the snow and makes the white stuff distinguishable in all weather types.

At one point on our first day snowboarding Aaron actually fell getting of the 'T'-bar and the next 'T' hit him squarely in the head at about 25 miles per hour. He went down like a sniper had shot him, falling face first into the snow. I nearly chocked trying not to laugh, it was great. It knocked him a bit blurry for a few minutes but we managed to get him out of the way so the operator could restart the lift. Unknowingly he snapped the above picture of me while I waited for him to regain his sense.
Some fresh tracks are shown above. Below is one of my few pics with Aaron in it. This is also one of the few pics that shows the Transformers on my board. I bought it for function, not looks but hey at least it's guy stuff.
We boarded hard but we ate better. On Aaron’s first night here I took him to a restaurant just down the road from the house. It was the same place I went when I first arrived. We had some traditional Wienerschnitzel and potatoes. The other nights, due to my budget constraints, I cooked for him. I say this biased, but as long as I stay single my culinary skills keep improving. I see this as a bit of a liability.
Our capstone meal included a tomato and mozzarella salad with garlic potato soup for starters followed by a pasta Alfredo with veggies and capped with a regional chocolate whipped pudding. Why would it be anything less? I really look forward to running this afternoon (in the beautifully warm sun – which is melting the new snow of course) to balance my calorie intake/output.

On the topic of food and calories, all the ski resorts here serve a local specialty, germknödel. It’s a cakelike dumpling that is jelly-filled (plum) and covered in vanilla sauce and powdered sugar/poppy seed mixture. Unlike the U.S. it is very difficult to find calorie counts on anything, not even on the internet. With that, I’ll guesstimate that the germknödel is well over 1,000 calories. I had one each day boarding.
I prefer to drink water while skiing or boarding for the simple reason that balance is numero uno in both sports and bier is public enemy #1 for balance. For the sake of the pictures, though, I borrowed Aaron’s bier because I thought it looked more Austrian. You can glimpse my water in the germknödel picture (top left corner of the pic).
I'll leave you at the base of the bunny hill lift (complete with the over-direction of Austrian signs). Yeah, we know how to do it, you put the incredibly distressing disk in between your legs and pray that you're at the top already, thanks.