"I've never heard of this," she told me, "and I learned how to ski there." she said with her eyes looking up and a slight mist appeared in her eyes. She was no doubt reliving her old snow bunny days. If you listened carefully you could here Glory Days by Bruce playing softly.
So we loaded up the bikes and headed south towards Pittsburgh. We stopped by a suburb and hooked up with Kitima's old friend from medical school. Rani is one of these larger-than-life personalities; a born raconteur. She is a trauma surgeon in Pittsburgh and when we went out to dinner she said, "I'm picking up the check and there is to be no further discussion about it." So Kitima and I ordered dessert.
The next day we headed over to Seven Springs and decided to ride the cross country trails. We wanted to work the desserts off, earn our vertical feet and save a buck as it was free. That coupled with the food her parents sent us off with that morning were going to make this an inexpensive proposition. I did however buy a three dollar root beer.
Starting from the bottom of a ski hill there isn't much warmup. We chose a few trails and climbed for thirty minutes and made it to the top without anyone collapsing. We unfurled the world's worst trail map. Kitima was sure it was crafted by 15th century cartographers as it didn't show trails where they should be and numbered trails emerged that weren't anywhere on the map.
"The only thing this map lacks," she said, "is drawings of sea monsters at the edge of the known earth."
Other than that the trails were outstanding. The first day we mostly bombed around intermediate trails but I did get out on a few black diamonds to keep it interesting.
Here is Kitima atop trail #10 in front of some interesting arrow pointing skyward. I chopped off the business end for some reason.
The sign reads, "for experts only" and was an ingenious trail design. These little spurs would take you over some pretty technical stuff but return you to the intermediate trail so riders of differing abilities can ride together.
Kitima took a pass! 
Kitima going aero on a hydra-bike. It was our second day and I jumped on the 24 hour course that was well marked for a while until it abruptly ended at a brand new road. Kitima trolled around near the summit and vanquished a trail that had gotten the better of her the day before. We'd love to get a bunch of people to head down there with us. We can all crash at her parents' house...the home cookin' is exceptional...let us know.
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