Winter Outing 2: Ruhpolding

Well, I've been so distracted with the spring coming, trying to get my taxes ready for my tax lady, and watching Star Wars on the weekend with Ronan that once again I've fallen behind on getting some thoughts down on my blog.

To finish off describing the rest of Ronan's February or Fasching vacation, we rented a car on the closing weekend and took two day trips: one to the city of Passau and the other to the small alpine town of Ruhpolding, which is a well-known, family-friendly ski area. I had hoped that I could talk Ronan into taking a down-hill skiing lesson with me, but he was more open to x-country, so I signed the three of us up for ski rental and a x-country lesson. It was spring-like when we got there, warm and sunny, which made for granular snow. No matter, we arrived, picked up our skis, met our ski instructor, and headed out for our lesson. Except that for some reason, Ronan refused to take part, so while he moped at the beginning of the trail, James and I enjoyed a good x-country ski lesson. James hadn never really cross-country skiied before, but he did great, and enjoyed the lesson. I learned a few new things as well. Ronan started to give it a try toward the end of the lesson and did a few rounds with me. Next time maybe we'll skip the lesson and I'll help him.

The town of Ruhpolding was in the process of preparing for the World Biathalon (x-country sking and target shooting) Championships the following week, so there was lots happening. After skiing, we went over to the downhill ski area to do some sledding and I even tried downhill inner-tubing or snow tubing, now that was fun!