So I went skiing this weekend with a group from Highland Heights church of Christ in Smyrna. I know them from visiting Short Mountain Bible Camp.
We left the church building at promptly 5:45PM Friday. They’ve set a precidence there. If you aren’t on time, you get left. Everyone knows this and arrives promptly.
HH has this huge Greyhound bus which they use on big trips like this. This model is one from 1988. The ride is pretty smooth. The bus is in good condition, although the mini-televisions (which are located up above every few seats) don’t work.
This whole trip was sorta deja vu for me, having been up there just a week before. Stayed at the same hotel and skied at the same place.
You could tell it was a holiday weekend. The ski lift lines and lodge was really crowded. A friend and I found a ski lift that wasn’t crowded at all and began to ski those hills almost exclusively. While we were there it started snowing. Eventually I had to break out the goggles I had borrowed.
The snow kept on and eventually those in charge got cold feet (literally) about a bus going down the hill from Paoli. So we decided to leave early. After several minutes of unsuccessfully trying to get the bus started, it eventually started. This was to be a foreshadowing of what was to come.
Getting back to the hotel, many of us played cards and other timewasters until the midnight curfew. We also explored the hotel and found some really interesting rooms full of old furniture in need of repair. There was some kind of fraternity/sorority dance going on in the room next door to our group meeting room. So no one wanted to stay in there.
We saw many different types of people in the hotel, from prom-dressed people to skiers coming in from the slopes. Some of the skiers even wore the rental boots and had the rented skis with them. The skis were clearly marked “Paoli Peaks rental.” I figured they were going back the next day and didn’t want to wait in line again. However I doubt that Paoli would have taken kindly to people taking their rental equipment back to the hotel with them.
There were church groups there from Tullahoma and Springfield, TN. Many had charter buses with them. It is amazing the number of Tennesseans which were staying in the hotel.
Sunday morning we worshipped in the group room which just a few hours before had been next door to the dance hall. I thought that we might have had some problems with literally back to back worship services (there was a Baptist church group meeting right next door to us), yet we didn’t have a problem since the worship services weren’t going on at the same time.
After worship, it was revealed to us that we were having bus troubles. We were told to expect a new bus at about 4PM. So we pretty much sat around and wasted more time until our bus arrived at 8:30PM. Not sure why it took so long. Glenn, HH’s youth minister, was going around apologizing for all this trouble. I told him it wasn’t anything he could do anything about (foresee it happening), so there was no need to apologize.
On the road we stopped at a McDonald’s/Gas Station somewhere in between Louisville and Elizabethtown. Normally I usually try to stay away from restaurants attached to gas stations. I don’t know why. I just figured the food would probably smell like gas or something.
We got back to Smyrna at 12:45 this morning. I finally got back home to MJ at around 1:45AM.
Glenn is the master negotiator. He was able to get a ski trip for a total of $82…and food was included in that price. We got breakfast in the mornings, Pizza Saturday night, and fried chicken Sunday for lunch. I don’t know how he does it. I asked him about it. He said he used to be a buyer and he was used to talking a seller down to a more reasonable price.