What Mark did on holiday

Have I mentioned before how much I hate returning home from holiday? Well I do. There's nothing in life I can rely on more to make me feel blue and generally down in the dumps. Especially when it's a good holiday (but then all holidays are good holidays). Still I've learned enough in recent years to know it doesn't do to dwell on the negatives. Particularly when there's so much else to both look forward too, and back upon. So, back to my holiday.

Oh, but firstly one small rant: Can I please get through just one flight without being taken aside to be searched and have my luggage ransacked? I know it's supposed to be random, but I'm fed up enough with the experience to believe they're picking on me personally. Before nigh every flight I take these days I have to submit to a search of some sort. I'm really quite fed of having to remove my shoes in airports. Three times it happened on this holiday. Three! Tell me true - do I look like a shoe bomber or a terrorist to you? Grmph.

Anyway, the latter part of the holiday was generally taken up with more skiing, although before we left we did stop by to visit some of Kevin's and Mija's friends to play board games and also merciless mock an old episode of Babylon 5 (I love the series as a whole, but this episode had some moments that begged for ridicule). My earlier trepidation concerning the idea of donning skis again had largely dissipated after our earlier excursion to Afton Alps during which I managed to successfully not kill myself nor any hapless bystanders. The destination for this part of the trip was the Dairy (and yes, I did intentionally capitalise Dairy. I do have some priorities) state of Wisconsin (If you'll allow me a Homer Simpson moment: Mmmm dairy), or more precisely Christmas Village in Wisconsin Dells.

It's a very pretty area of countryside, especially when snowbound. The odd thing about the landscape is that it doesn't differ too greatly from the countrysides of Scotland and England . Outside of the urban areas it's remarkably similar. In the urban areas, however, you can most certainly see the difference. To be kind to the town of Wisconsin Dells, it's somewhat geared towards tourists. To be less kind it has, mayhap, a slight tendency towards the tacky (I think the level of tackiness of a town is directly proportional to the number of buildings painted pink, with Wisconsin Dells scoring particularly highly in this area). It's also somewhat curiously host to the largest water parks in the US, both indoor and outdoors, but alas we didn't have time to take advantage of such facilities.

We managed to hit two ski slopes that weekend, the largest and most impressive being that at Devils Head (very comforting name that). We spent pretty much a full day there, and I signed up for a much needed ski lesson in the morning. The instructor was extremely helpful, although I discovered that I'd fall over with alarming consistency if I gave too much thought to what he was telling me. Perhaps there's something to be said for just going with the flow after all. I also discovered that skiing is probably one of the few sports which I'm currently built for. Much as I've come to love swimming, I don't exactly have a swimmers build and have an annoying tendency to sink in water. Skiing on the other hand is something I seem well adapted for. I ended the day without feeling overly tired or achy, although I was perhaps a little on the cold side (I come away with a much better idea of the sort of clothing to take on a skiing holiday - I was just a little underprepared this time around).

Besides the skiing we also managed a spot of snowtubing, something I hadn't encountered before, but which basically consists of hurtling down a hill on little more than a reinforced inner tube. It wasn't quite as much fun as skiing, largely, I think, because there was no lift up the hill, resulting in an effort to fun ratio that put the emphasis firmly on the effort side of the scale. There was, however, a certain manic glee to be had from taking a run down the hill then flinging yourself on to your tube. I'm not sure if I cackled loudly while doing so, but it wouldn't have been out of place.

And in between all the activities there was the simple pleasure of hanging around with good friends, sitting around, playing games, eating (oh, I'm praying to the gods they don't start selling cookie dough over here. It's lethal stuff and insidiously addictive) and talking. An experience not to be taken lightly.

Unfortunately, our party didn't escape the weekend entirely without incident. When earlier I asked "What could possibly go wrong" I was thinking only of myself and my usual propensity for catastrophe. Alas, whilst I escaped with nary a scratch, another of our number succumbed to injury at the last. Poor Mija who, outside Simon's not inconsiderable skiing experience, was easily the most poised and graceful of all of us on skis, took what turned out to be a nastier spill that I fear most of us realised at the time. Luckily it seems no lasting harm has been done. Get well soon in the meantime.

I don't feel too bad about having come back now. There is a certain comfortable familiarity in returning home, but given the chance I think I'd much rather be zipping down a hill on skis with a ludicrously cold wind blowing in my face.

But I can wait until next time.