March 2007
SAIS on the Slopes
By Nadav Davidai

On the second weekend of February, 32 SAIS-ers and a few significant others decided, to hell with studying, we’re going to Pennsylvania!

Why on earth would otherwise rational students sacrifice a perfect Saturday afternoon of studying in the Nitze library for Pennsylvania of all states, you may ask? Well, it just so happens that deep in the heart of the Keystone State lies Seven Springs Resort, a snowy oasis for Metro Atlantic skiing.

Such a successful endeavor was not always a certainty, however. The ultimate success of the trip will obscure the fact that a week before the trip, due to the lack of interest and proper transportation, I made a fateful call to my cohort Kevin Johnson to cancel the trip.

The trip was rescued only with the tireless dedication and sheer chutzpah of a few Bologneses (special thanks to Renee Lamb, Kristina Mitchell, and Chris Saunders). Within hours of canceling, not only was the ski trip back on, Kevin and I had to scurry to find another townhouse to accommodate the newfound demand. Suddenly, the problem became having too many people instead of too few – a good problem to have.

Once the trip was back on we had to plan the logistics. Of course, being the astute economists that we are, SAIS-ers realized that retail is for suckers. With the sheer force of our overwhelming numbers, we managed to get lift passes for $38 per day, an unbeatable deal. Group rentals were also utilized, as was the crucial Costco discount, which brought food/beer costs down below $10 per person (thanks, Ben Deering). Room and board plus one day’s ski passes and rentals came out to be $165.42 per person.

Seven Springs is actually quite a charming little resort. When you first survey the area, a cow pasture would pop into your mind, not a ski resort. Yet the wizards at Seven Springs envisioned just that – and squeezed every bit of potential out of their sea-level hills. There are 9 lift chairs on this “mountain” as well as some nice long groom runs on the North Face. There are also two small snowboard parks; the smaller one has a rope pull so that you can ride the park non-stop without unstrapping your board or riding another lift, while the bigger of the two includes a nifty little half pipe and some bigger jumps. Best of all, Seven Springs allows you to night ski on your regular day pass. This means that for a regular lift ticket, you can ski from 8am until 10:30pm, if you so choose.

The resort itself was nicely set up. There are ski-in condos right on the mountain (meaning, a lift takes you there and you can ski right to your front door), and the cheaper condos are a short 10-minute drive away. Buses run from the townhouse area to the resort every 15 minutes until 2:00 in the morning.

But the Seven Springs party scene was just as integral to the trip as the skiing. SAIS students came out strong on both Friday and Saturday nights. When my carload of travelers arrived at the condo at one a.m. on Friday night, a houseful of revelers, many of which had been partying for the past eight hours, greeted us. Nothing beats the feeling of coming out of the cold into a warm condo abuzz with SAIS-ers gathered around a fireplace with beers in their hands and greeting each new arrival with cheers. On Saturday night, first year students Alex Selim and Natalie Kempke cooked up some mean chili and enchiladas, respectively, and we continued the festivities with Kings, our drinking game of choice. A good time was had by all.

Perhaps two SAIS-ers best embodied the weekend’s festivities: birthday boy Andreas Dahl-Jorgensen, who got thrown into two feet of snow, and Nick Horne, who was too alcohol- and hiccup-induced to complete the Kings task assigned to him. The only shortcoming was the lack of a hot tub – a problem we will surely rectify for next year.

Nadav Davidai is a 1st year MA candidate in Middle East Studies, and an epicurean and event-organizer extraordinaire

In short, the ski trip can be broken down as such:

-Groceries: $300
-Lift passes: $1520
-Rentals: $580
-Total hours driven: 60
-Alcohol consumed: 200 beers and 5 Costco sized bottles of wine
-Leaving DC for the weekend and skiing/partying with your friends: priceless