I was finally able to create a window to travel and visit my daughter and go skiing. I had run out of Armour Thyroid a month ago while Skiing with her in Mt. Shasta. So, after spending a month feeling very not like myself while waiting for new Armour Thyroid from Canada. (For those of you incredibly upset like I have been that Armour Thyroid ' a miracle drug with no side effects at all stopped being made in the U.S.'It treats Hypothyroidism with t3 powdered pig thyroid and t4 with synthroid in combination'. I finally found I could buy it from Canada with a Doctor's prescription from the U.S.) So, since I now felt like myself again and strong of body, mind and will I was ready to travel. While I was driving north I called my old friend to see if he was free to ski with us in Shasta. He said he was playing music at a concert in Laguna Beach, Ca. I said to think of me while he was bodysurfing waves in the ocean there. He said he was still dripping from the bodysurfing while we spoke. My Aunt used to have a home there when I was in my 20s so I have many good memories of that area.
As I drove north I girded myself for the extra two hours of driving up into Oregon. I hadn't really had time to emotionally or physically prepare for the journey as I had left messages last week but didn't hear from my daughter until Sunday. So I only had time to pack the car, sleep the night and leave early so I wouldn't have snow or black ice problems going over the Mt. Ashland pass into Oregon from California. She and her boyfriend took me to a place called Medicine mountain that over looks a Llama farm with many llamas. The mountain was a great lookout point to see the whole area and quite beautiful.
It is a time of healing for me and my daughter. I did not get to raise her after she was 5 as her mother and I divorced then. However, somehow we have continued to have a good relationship through it all. It is a happy time now that my daughter has moved out of her mother's ranch and is living with her boyfriend that I am once again welcome in my daughter's home. It is a time of happiness and healing for my and my daughter after all these years. For the last 10 years we have managed to go skiing together in Mt. Shasta either Cross country or Downhill. The last 5 years after she became an expert skier she took up snowboarding. So her boyfriend is an expert snowboarder and she is now intermediate snowboarder. Since I started on cross country skis and never have taken a lesson in my life I have a very different skiing style. I don't like turning much so I turn as little as possible and weave back an forth across the slopes like someone who is combining metal edged cross country skiing and Downhill skiing. I'm still the most comfortable when I'm mountaineering skiing in unmanicured virgin snow. I put up with manicured snow and 60 mph snowboarders whisking past me because I'm 62 and don't have to work so hard if I ride the lifts to the top. But I still manage to cross country ski at least 1 time each year from 9000 feet down to about 5 thousand feet in a run I love on Mt. Shasta that Starts at Bunny Flats and ends at 7 mile curve. This is reached on Everette Memorial Highway when it is plowed and open.(which seems to be not very often these last few winters). I also like to ski across Castle Lake at 6000 feet but more and more the road is snowed closed and not plowed so doing that seems to get more problematic each year. However, I have memories of skiing across Castle Lake when I lived in Mt. Shasta since I bought my first pair of Fisher Cross Country skis in Ashland, Oregon in 1976 the very first time I moved to Mt. Shasta. But since I moved away from Shasta for the last time in 1992 it has been 18 years since I lived there and could ski any day I wasn't working or busy doing something else. Though I miss those days somehow living on the ocean in Northern California seems to work better for me now I'm almost 62. The winters aren't quite so cold along the coast as they can be in Mt. Shasta. Also, where I live now it stays under 70 degrees most of the summer as well so the temperature range is only between about high 30s to a maximum of 85 or 90 Fahrenheit on the ocean. Whereas Mt. Shasta can be 115 degrees in the Summer or down to below zero Fahrenheit on rare occassions during the winter at night. However, I still miss being in my 20s and 30s and living in the mountains and being "A mountain Man" and all that.
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