Day 84 - 17 Runs and Knowing When to Stop

No alarm this morning.

Just a slow 7am wake-up. No early Brisbane meeting. No rush. The kids slept in a little, which felt like a win after stacking ski days back-to-back.

We rolled into breakfast quietly. Coffee for me. Something warm and simple for everyone else. I jumped on the laptop for a bit — some work bits, some website tweaks. Still refining. Still adjusting. It honestly feels a bit like surveying. Tiny changes that no one notices on their own, but together they shift the whole structure.

The kids were keen to ski again.

Kia wasn’t.

She wanted a slower day. Website work. Tidying. Space.

And that’s one thing I’m learning on this trip — we don’t all have to move at the same speed.

So the three of us headed off around 11:30 after schoolwork, reading, and packing lunches. That rhythm is locked in now. Work. School. Pack food. Go.

Driving up was eerie.

No cars. Not one.

Normally it’s a slow crawl up the hill. Today the road was empty. We parked right at the top near the gondolas — premium parking, no stress.

Boots on. Boards and skis out. Backpack sorted.

The kids wanted to eat lunch in the gondola so we could get straight into it at the top. Efficient operators. So we sat there chewing sandwiches mid-air, dangling above the valley. Simple. Quiet. I loved that moment.

At the top, Maddie clipped in and took off before Emmett and I had even tightened our boots.

We dropped the bag and headed to the easiest run first — the one with the bend, a little flatter. But it was rock hard and icy. Groomed, but firm. We did two or three runs before deciding it wasn’t worth fighting it.

The steeper side would be softer.

And it was.

From there it was just repetition.

Up.
Down.
Up.
Down.

Seventeen runs in total.

And I didn’t even have my watch on. No stats. No Strava. Just legs burning and gravity doing its thing.

We stopped for lunch with the Norwegians when they came across from the other mountain. It still blows me away how quickly you build community on the road. A few weeks ago we didn’t know them. Now we’re swapping mountain stories midweek.

The kids found this little drop-off beside one of the runs and both sent it. Not huge. Just enough to feel brave. The smiles after were everything.

Then Emmett hit the wall.

It wasn’t anything big. Just one of those small things that becomes massive when you’re tired. Ski days look glamorous from the outside, but they’re physical. Mentally draining too. He got grumpy. Emotional. Done.

And we probably stayed half an hour longer than we should have.

That’s the trap, isn’t it? When the conditions are good, when everyone’s flying, when you think, “Just one more.”

Eventually it was clear.

Time to go.

We grabbed our stuff and headed for the gondola. On the way down we just chatted. Quiet, tired talk. Both kids were cooked.

When we got to the car, I called Kia.

We were meant to stop at the shop on the way home, but I knew it wasn’t happening.

“I think we just need to come home.”

So we did.

Straight home. Unload. Upstairs. Showers. Movie. Silence.

Kia grabbed the keys and headed back out to grab dinner supplies and a few extra snacks to keep us going.

I jumped back into work. Some fieldwork had come in, so I needed to sketch out a plan and get it off to drafting, ready for QA over the weekend. It still feels surreal doing Queensland cadastral work from a ski town in Austria. Different mountains. Same coordinates.

Dinner was pulled beef burgers. Unreal.

And then the sleeping conversation surfaced again.

The kids haven’t wanted to sleep together on the pullout couch the last few nights. They want us to split up and sleep individually with them. Divide and conquer.

Maddie says she’s not sleeping well next to Emmett. Emmett wants one of us beside him. We’ve been holding the boundary, but I can feel the pressure building. Living in tight quarters magnifies everything. Sleep becomes currency.

My own sleep still hasn’t settled since we arrived in Austria. It’s better than the first few nights, but not great. HRV still lower than it was in Vietnam. Maybe the cold. Maybe altitude. Maybe just nervous system load from constant stimulation and change.

But lying there, I realised something.

Today wasn’t about skiing.

It was about pacing.

About knowing when to push and when to pull back. About recognising the signs in your kids before they completely unravel. About choosing to drive straight home instead of squeezing in one more errand.

Seventeen runs.

Two tired kids.

One quiet mountain.

And a reminder that sometimes the best decision of the day is simply knowing when to stop.

That was Day 84.