The Sporting News

One afternoon for each of eight winter weeks, almost every school kid in Vermont gets out of school early for Winter Sports.  The ski resorts and skating areas offer extremely reduced prices on lessons and equipment, and the Winter Sports take the place of phys ed for our kids.This year I can't get up the mountain, so we're skating.  That is, eight-year-old Thing2 skates while fourteen-year-old Thing1 tests the menu at the snack bar and the limit of my wallet and I doodle and catch up with parents I haven't seen since before Christmas.Even though I'm wearing a fracture boot to negotiate a snowy parking lot in the winter, it's a good antidote for cabin fever.