Viewing posts by Suzanne Hoffman
Reminder that there will be NO trip on December 29th. We’ll see you again on January 5th, 2019!
As an all-volunteer organization, the holidays can be a tricky time of year. Historically, we have taken a breaak of two weeks in December. I decided to put December 22nd back in our schedule as many parents suggested they were interested in a trip prior to Christmas. That was before we had also added back in our Hyde Park stop. Finding the right Supervisors is always a challenge and while we have been fortunate to have a couple of people from Hyde Park step up to volunteer on a consisten basis, this Saturday, December 22nd, is NOT included in the list of dates that we have covered. Therefore, there will be NO BUS LEAVING FROM HYDEPARK this Saturday. We welcome participants from that stop to join us at our other stops, maybe Lincoln Park or River Forest.
The challenges of running an organization of the size of Blizzard means there are a lot of moving parts. The one that should be moving the most, other than our skiers and boarders, are the buses. We have had bus failures before, and we will continue to have them, as they are out of our control. Coach buses are prone to a whole host or issues, ragardless of the competence of the bus company. We swithced to a new larger one with more modern buses last year after a bus breakdown. We are impacted once again. The current situation is just one of wait and resolve. We have great experienced supervisors on the bus and everyone is safe. We are waiting for a replacement vehicle and expect everyone to b e home about 8 PM.
The first trip is always the hardest. We have returning members and new ones and none of us remember exactly what it feels like to be on snow and outdoors for long period of times. No one was exempt from our classification system who had previous experience with skiing or snowboarding. Most of the group complied and we had more than 270 kids participate in lessons. We will continue to classify kids until everyone has been put into the correct level of instruction. Typically the first day back on the slopes is not your best, so I encouraged my busload of kids to take a run or two before heading over to classification as it continues right up until the lesson time at 10AM. The same will be true this coming week as well. Several members regained their "muscle memory" for skiing and moved up from the class they were put in. The review at a lower class was good expereince.
One of the challenges of Before Christmas trips is the increase in traffic. I mentioned it in each of my webinars and in previous emails. Besides holiday shopping we have Zoo Lights and holiday parties which add to the volume of traffic which invariably makes us late the first few trips. With new routes and new pick up spots we are running late for most picks. Please be patient. We’ll be in Hyde Park and River Forest shortly.