Saying goodbye to winter

April is a busy time of year for many of us as we transition from winter into spring. Aside from doing our income taxes, I start winding down my ski season and ramping up for cycling and bike racing. This year was a heck of a winter in the northeast, with several snowstorms in late February and early March that left people wishing winter would end. But I tend to hold onto winter as it's one of my favorite seasons.

Winter is a time when you can spend more time inside with friends or family, read a book sitting by the fire, enjoy a hot bowl of soup or cocoa. But you needn't spend your whole winter indoors getting lazy and fat- even if that is a programmed biological tendency for mammals. Winter goes by much faster if you spend more time outside. There are often gloriously sunny days during winter with cloudless skies and sunlight is a known antidote to the winter blues. Moreover, winter sports such as skiing, snowshoeing or skating will keep you fit and stimulate your body's endorphins.

And then there are the storms. For those of us that love this season, the excitement starts when those first flakes begin to fall and the ground gets covered in a blanket of white. Suddenly, the neighborhood becomes a silent, mystical place. Roads and walkways vanish into one extensive white landscape.

I do a lot of skiing during the winter. Some days were pure recreational ski days, others were driving my daughter to race practice. This winter we were fortunate enough to have some natural snow in the Poconos that lay in the trees between the trails. On a trip to Seven Springs, I found myself schussing through powdery moguls in Western Pennsylvania's coal country. It snowed there for four straight days as a storm system hung over the area during President's weekend. During the winter my daughter bonded with her racing teammates and I met a lot of people on the chairlifts and slopes. That in itself made all the early mornings worth it.

Now the snow is all gone and a lot of us find ourselves missing our winter friends and mountains. We will just have to wait anther 200 days.