Wow! What a GREAT week of skiing, snowboarding and FUN!

Upon arrival we gathered for a wine and cheese party in (TC) Angie and (ATC) Marnie’s condo. Thanks to Sue Olstad who was kind enough to drive all of our beer and wine up to Copper. She and Marianne Pearce even iced them down for us. There were guest appearances by Cher (Linda Alardin), Rod Stewart (Ric Ploeger), Katherine Hepburn (Betty Storms) and Phyllis Diller (Gail Blanton). Everyone enjoyed guessing what name was stuck on their backs. It was a fun way for all of us to mix and mingle.

On Saturday some people took lessons in the morning while others headed straight to the slopes. Our attempt to meet for lunch was stymied because our meeting place was closed, but most people were able to meet up with other SCSC members anyway. Unfortunately this was not the only day that the lunch meeting place was closed (Marnie was fired as lunch coordinator after this happened a second time on Wednesday).

On Monday evening everyone got a Valentine’s present because it started snowing and didn’t stop  several days. It was beautiful! Several couples on the trip took advantage of Valentine’s Day and spent the evening alone together, including Joe Bruccoliere and Karen Mozisek.

The partying started up again on Tuesday with our SCSC party. Not only did we enjoy the food, beverages, and company, but we were also treated to delicious homemade candy brought by Merlyn Harger. We learned that Robert Samen is a martini connoisseur. He treated any takers to his martinis made with his own shaker (he never leaves home without it!). Tom Kaptain enjoyed a massage from three women at the same time. He was the envy of all! What did he ever do to deserve that?

Several people enjoyed other activities on Tuesday. Mac McNamara went dogsledding. The sled went off the roadway and fell over, Mac went face first into the snow and the dogs kept going! Eventually, Mac was reunited with the K-9’s. Christina Heyne said the snowshoeing at Copper is great. It was even free! On one of her trips, the leader got lost due to all the extra snow and it took an extra hour to reach the bottom of the mountain. Angie Westergren ventured out on the snowboard and had a blast.

Wednesday night several adventurous people went tubing, including Kayleen Kill, Kris Rogge and Alan Bitzer. Debra Brannen almost needed a dentist after going airborne on her tube! Afterwards at Apres ski, Ron Hayes (the official cameraman) was never without his camera, and he usually had more than one with him. His efforts were appreciated throughout the trip. Thanks, Ron! The individual and club races were on Thursday. Bob Wray, Race Director, did an excellent job of coordinating the SCSC racers. SCSC was third to compete in the morning Cup races. It was a difficult course, and 18 fearless SCSC racers were forced to wait nearly an hour.

with the fastest SCSC time of 31.10 seconds, and Kayleen Kill received a silver medal for her time of 33.02. Additional bronze medal winners in the club race were Angie Westergren, Alan Bitzer and Bob Wray. Other racers, including Cindy Moore, Teri Welsh, Kris Rogge, Judy Schiro, Mac McNamara, Gunnar Heyne and Meynard Nussbaum successfully completed the course and contributed points to our grand total of 289. Other members of SCSC came to cheer on our racers, including Marianne Pearce, Elyse Turla, Linda Alardin, Sue Olstad and Betty Storms. After the race we all enjoyed a great mountain BBQ lunch, then Kayleen, Angie, Judy, Robert, Alan and Gunnar headed off to compete in the afternoon Individual races. Kayleen and Angie received silver medals. Robert and Alan received bronze medals. Finally, at the Friday night awards dinner all three of our female SCSC Individual racers received TSC plaques for finishing in the top three overall in their respective age groups: Angie (second), Kayleen (third) and Judy (second). Congratulations and many thanks to all of our SCSC racers!

Thursday night, Linda Alardin, Teri Welsh, Janet Delgado and Debra Brannen invited everyone to their condo for a potluck dinner. Again, there was plenty of food and libations for all. Angie Westergren won the best pajama dressed leader award, but why was she avoiding drafty windows and Ron’s camera?

Friday, our last day of skiing proved to be a bit much on some. Gaynell Blasé and Marnie Lamb were a little out of their league on one of the steeper blue runs and ended up sliding down an ungroomed mogul run on their butts, which was easier for Gaynell since she just followed the trail that Marnie had already blazed! They would like to thank Ron Hayes for his questionable navigational skills in finding a “safer” alternate route.

At the TSC farewell party, SCSC was represented on the dance floor by Lesly Van Dame, who encouraged many others to join her, including Rita Cardenas and Leyla Ozkardesh. She was also joined by Mike Mason and Cindy Moore, who impressed us all with their dance skills. Rumor has it that Mike is a dance instructor! After the party, a few people went to a bar and played pool. Angie and especially Marnie surprised all with the skills they obviously learned very well at Texas A&M. Other pool teams included Doug Broussard & Janet Delgado ,Mac McNamara & Teri Welsh and Elyse Turla and some random man at the bar.

Another fabulous SCSC ski year has come to a close. Please make a special effort to attend our May 16th “Follies” meeting. (Okay, it is really a luau party at Vito’s!) It will be the perfect opportunity to reminisce about all of your recent SCSC experiences.

Thanks largely to the efforts of Bruce Lowther, and with help from Sean O’Brien, you will now be able to choose to pay your membership dues on line, with no extra fees, via Pay Pal by credit card. Even better, you will be able to save time, effort and money by pre-paying in 3 year or 5 year increments if you choose! See details later in this Sitzmarke.

The time is now to grow our membership for next year. It is each member’s responsibility to make guests feel welcome and included in meetings, happy hours and activities. If they don’t feel welcome, they will not join. If we don’t have a continuous influx of new, young members join, our club will eventually die. I have a few plans to make this year the best growth year for SCSC in years. We will revitalize the Ambassador system at the meetings. You will hear more about this in future articles. If you enjoy meeting new people and making them feel welcome, please contact me about becoming an ambassador. We will need many volunteers in this area for next year. I am suggesting a tri-effort between the President’s Office, the VP of Programs and the VP of Membership for this program to succeed. The success of this program is vital to our growth and absolutely needs a boost.

I have had feedback from many prospective and younger members that they will join us if we offer trips that are short enough to fit into their monetary and vacation time budget. I believe we need to start thinking out of the box and offering 4-day alternative trips to coincide with some of our best attended trips. Younger people most often only have 2 weeks of vacation a year, and need to make the most of every day. We need to cater to our current membership, while constantly thinking about the needs of prospective, younger, members. I hope you’ll join me in making this the best growth year in SCSC history!

I would like to begin this article and this new SCSC executive team term by giving thanks to Y’ALL for your support in bringing me to the VP Programs position. I am very excited about the club’s potential.

We have so much to offer: a wide spectrum of activities, quality people and the backbone of 40 years of existence. We have an excellent beginning. Ellen Eastham, our former VP Programs, already has scheduled many activities, (please see the activities calendar), that will smooth the transition into my new role as your VP of Programs.

I face the challenge of putting together a dynamic, positive and goal oriented team. I am counting on each of you and especially on a few of you who are willing to share in the opportunity to organize and participate in non skiing activities. Activities that enrich our personal lives are the glue that keeps us together during the warm months, which is most of the time here in Texas! I have an immediate need for a volunteer for the position of Director of Programs, Activity Coordinators and their Assistants. Please contact me by phone, e-mail or at the meetings.

The way to plan activities is very simple: present your idea to me, (something you would like to do and share with your fellow SCSCers), we discuss and agree to the details, identify an Activity Coordinator (maybe yourself), prepare a budget and present it to the club executive committee. The executive committee approves it and voilà, we have a fun evening, day, weekend or week for the club. At the same time there are some “traditional” activities where you can help a lot, like the Holiday party, Fashion shows, Volunteer party, General meetings, Happy Hours etc.

SCSC Happy Hours are very important, monthly after work opportunities to drain the stress of the day in a couple of drinks, finger food and a good chatting. Deb Cini has been doing a great job and I am delighted that she has agreed to continue coordinating them.

I have, and I am sure that the rest of the executive committee members have too, an open door policy. Please come to us and tell us how we can make the club better. We can grow together. Just keep in mind that we need your help!

Wasn’t the 2004/2005 ski season great? Many thanks to Lori Gilliland, Marsha Lutz and all the TC’s and ATC’s who ran a great lineup of trips. As a Director of Trips last year, I learned a lot and now, I and my two DOT’s (pending approval by the Executive Committee), Hope Flynn and Patty Finch, are in the midst of putting together the 2005-2006 schedule. We have a BIG job ahead of us.

If you are interested being a TC or ATC for next year, the application is on the web site at http://www.spacecityskiclub.org/Forms/SCSC-TC-ATC-App2005.pdf. In particular, we are interested in TC’s and ATC’s for short trips (usually 5 days). But if you are only interested in a week trip, apply also. You must have been on an SCSC trip in the past in order to be a TC or ATC. It is a great way to meet new people and have a trip run the way YOU want it (within certain guidelines, of course).

So, that’s what we know so far. We’ve got some ideas for the other trips, but if you are interested in a particular location, let us know and we will look into it.

As I mentioned, we are hoping to run more short trips. We will look at all our full week trips (both TSC and club) to see if we can offer a short trip alternative. This will be dependent on airline flight schedules (we want to fly out after work) as well as the length of travel from the airport to the destination, and finally on getting an ATC to lead the short trip. And, finally, in order to get group fares on the air, we will need at least 10 full package participants.

Last year we increased our skier numbers even though our membership declined slightly. Lori did this by declaring 2004-2005 the “YEAR OF THE SKIER”. So, by the power vested in me by the Snow Gods and SCSC, I declare the year 2005-2206 to the “YEAR OF THE SKIER – PART 2”. Help Patty, Hope and I by letting us know where you want to ski and consider being a TC or ATC.

TO BE CONTINUED…

After expanding this popular trip to an amazing 80 people, we set out on Saturday morning, February 26. An army of excited SCSCers filtered into Bush Intercontinental. Continental did a great job checking in our group. Lou Kleinman, was so excited to go that he left his boarding pass in the e-machine. Luckily, the TC was able to locate him before this security breach shut down the airport. The only loose end was not realizing some excited participants had arrived prior to the TC and ATC and were already at the gate. Janet McKenzie and Frank Adams were the last to arrive much to the relief of their buddy, Morris Covin who was incredulous that these hard-core skiers might miss the trip to Vail. Charlene Fleming got the award for “traveled the farthest to join us” by coming from her job in Russia. Even the jet-lagged Charlene did better than Steve Jaeger who obviously needed a few more hours sleep. As a joke, the trip leaders gave him a nametag with two green smiling faces and a misspelled name. He didn’t even notice!

Once in Denver, we were met by Leslie Adams and Steve Ellsberry from San Jose, California who were joining buddies Greg Conary and Theresa Tanchak on the trip. Once the group was organized we took off for a planned stop at Applejacks to fill up with adult beverages, some groceries, and eat lunch. Applejacks had just barely enough adult beverages for our thirsty group. Business was so good that in appreciation Applejacks donated three free cases of wine for our evening wine and cheese welcome party. Why were the buses having such a hard time climbing out of Denver on I-70? Perhaps it was those adult beverages. Upon our arrival in Vail, we were joined by our land participants. Nora and Mike Montgomery, Judy Corke and Ray Garrett came from Denver where Mike is now working. Helmut and Martha Zenger and their buddies the Schidlowskis came from Colorado Springs where the Zengers now reside. Ski bum, Keith Kirkman, who had leisurely driven from Houston also joined us. An added bonus, Stacey and JR Ronczy dropped in from Denver. Excited conversation flowed along with the wine. A loud bell had to be used to get the group’s attention to listen to a welcome speech from Mary Lou, our representative from Vail Resorts. Mary Lou told our excited group about a wide variety of events happening in Vail including “telemarking” lessons. Tina Williams misunderstood and thought she said “telemarketing.” OK, get those phone banks ready!

The trip leaders discovered very soon that they had lost control. Who was sleeping with whom? It took to about the middle of the week to find out where some people had relocated. Condo 1423 had no one left that was originally assigned to it. Where did they go? Perhaps, they heard of a sight to behold over in the next condo: Kurt Schidlowski doing morning push-ups in his birthday suit (really).

On Wednesday, while many of the group went skiing on fresh snow that had fallen the night before, seven intrepid adventurers decided instead to go on a snowmobile tour. Participants included Bob and Mary Simpson, Ray Davis, Mike Dawson, Arlen Isham, Rick and Jane Adams. Most of the group had been on a snowmobile at one time or another, but the fact that Jane had never ridden one did not stop the group from letting her join them. After a brief discussion of operating instructions, safety tips and a review of hand signals they would be using, they took off over the open ground toward the mountains nearby. The guide had wisely encouraged the less experienced to ride in the back of the line. It was soon evident why. On more than one occasion Jane came upon the group at rest, waiting for her to catch up.

When they came to an open field, the “kids” were finally allowed to “let them run”. Of course, in between the times they got themselves stuck in snowbanks or in snow wells near trees. A search party had to go looking for Arlen Isham who buried the front of his snowmobile when he tried to run over a stump. Mike Dawson came a bit too close to a tree, but the guide was able to kick out the dent Mike created. Ask Bob Simpson how he got stuck in a snowdrift? Iron man, Arlen Isham caught so much air, the guide said that it just had to hurt when he landed.

Meanwhile back on the mountain, while skiing with Cheryl Crockett, Chris Manges, Sandy Fowler, and  some others, Steve Jaeger made an unfortunate remark to Cheryl who was leading them around. He was frustrated with a customer who was calling from Houston and remarked that the customer was a typical cheerleader type: cute but stupid. Cheryl said "Hey I was a cheerleader!". Steve spent the rest of the day killing himself following Cheryl and the others on 10 miles of catwalks which are torture for a snowboarder. She swears it was a coincidence!