To give you a scale of the pandemic right now. This year will be the worst for homicides in two decades. We’ll lose more people to Covid in the next two weeks, most likely, than those lost to homicide all year.
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) November 25, 2020
2020/2021 Ski Day 2: Wachusett
My first “real” day of skiing was in-state, at good old WaWa. It’s possible that COVID-19 travel restrictions may mean I don’t ski a single day outside of Massachusetts. I expect to become acquainted with the likes of Berkshire East and Jiminy Peak before too long.
Thanks to COVID-19, skiing at WaWa is a time-restricted, by-reservation-only affair. I bought my slot for the day’s early session, 7:30 to 11:45. Conditions were about what one should expect for an early season day on all-manufactured snow. By about 9:30 what little powder there had been in the middle of the trail was gone, and I kept to the sides, where it had been shoved.


Link of the Day
Link of the Day
Link of the Day
2020/2021 Ski Day 1: Underwood Hill
The Boston area got some snow the night of October 30th: two to three inches in parts!
I awoke early Halloween morning deadset on skiing a small hill near my home: Underwood Hill, which leads down to the Underwood Pool (which a few years ago replaced its namesake, the first public swimming pool in the United States). As I loaded the car with skis and boots, the words to Billy Joel’s You May Be Right played through my head: I may be crazy. I knew that when I returned home, and my wife woke up, she would just shake her head and sigh.
A family arrived with sleds at just about the same time I did, and the Mom gave me a thumbs up as I proceeded with my ridiculous suburban ski adventure.

After six laps I had gotten about as much satisfaction as I think that hill could deliver.
So that was my first outing of the new, still uncertain ski season. Six laps of a forty-one-foot-vertical hill.
It’s gotta be all up from here.