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cordless bungee jumps on the king-size bed.
    â€œHoney,” I said to my wife, “I need to go check my e-mail.”
    â€œThere’s no Internet access in the cigar bar,” said Mrs. O.
    â€œWhatever.”
    Ohio provided other, less expected, luxuries. Peter and Paris Ferrante, members of the Cleveland Ski Club, took us to dinner at Ferrante Winery and Ristorante, owned by Peter’s family. Ohio has better ethnic food than New York City, for a simple reason. The more enterprising immigrants to America—even the O’Rourkes—realized that Ohio was a better deal than the slums of Manhattan. And one of the first enterprises of the more enterprising immigrants was to fix dinner. There’s Cincinnati schnitzel, Cleveland kielbasa, Toledo falafel. Ferrante’s food was best of all. The veal dishes would challenge the sincerity of the most rigorous food ethicist. The squid could send Neapolitan fisherman to cast their nets in the Great Lakes. But it was the wine that amazed. Ohio has wine but it’s mostly from Concord grapes, the grapes used to make a PB&J. Cork up some ofthose jelly jars with the Flintstones on them, store these in your basement for a few years, and you’ve got Ohio wine. The Ferrante family, however, has been working for seventy years to grow grapes for adults on the shores of Lake Erie. The result is that splendid wine you get at a bistro in Italy, the wine that comes to the table in an unmarked carafe, and when you ask what it is, the waiter offers only Mediterranean shrugs and evasions—because it’s imported from Ohio.
    But does Ohio have skiing that’s equally great? Actually, in a way, it does. The Cleveland Ski Club was organized in 1937 and is one of the few ski clubs in America that owns its own hill. Most Ohio skiers are Ohioans stuck on skis. Cleveland Ski Club members are skiers stuck in Ohio. When they can’t get to Jackson Hole or Stowe they go thirty miles east of Cleveland to Big Creek. They found the property by looking at topo maps and asking the state highway department where it had the most trouble plowing roads. Big Creek isn’t really a hill. The slope goes down, not up, into a 175-foot-deep, heavily wooded gorge. The club hired a timber company to clear four ski trails. Each is a version, in miniature, of a perfect run. A broad, arcing sweeper is smooth enough for childrens’ lessons but fast enough to race on, and it provides three minutes of micro-cruising. A wider, precipitous, mildly bumped descent flutters the tummy. Or you can gut-wrench yourself on a more precipitous, ungroomed version where you swallow all 175 feet in one gulp. Then there’s a nightmare of a glade, or, if not quite long enough to be a nightmare, a nightmare’s coming-attractions reel.
    Big Creek is open to the public but seems to be skied usually by club devotees, some of them third-generation members. The club does most of the maintenance and grooming itself. On the lip of the gorge there’s a small Swiss-stylechalet full of kids, prized chili recipes in potluck dishes, and parents keeping babies from crawling into the fireplace. Outside, the snowbanks are stuck full of cold beers.
    Big Creek has two T-bars. Mastering these up the side of the gorge is a better test of skiing skills than conquering the Colorado backcountry. Muffin had a last-moment flinch that sent the T-bar into Dad’s kidney. Ski Club kids Poppet’s age were unfazed. They made my skiing look like Poppet’s.
    Lest Poppet end up skiing like me forever, I tried to give her a lesson. I held her under her arms, plopped her into the ample wedge made by my old-fashioned skis, and headed down the sweeper. Apparently Poppet has been studying the techniques of nonviolent protest and passive resistance (perhaps in the works of Gandhi—she attends a progressive preschool). She went completely limp, converting her thirty-five pounds into the stuff at the center of