Happy Christmas!

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house

All the kids were still stirring, though we kicked out the mouse;

The tree from the backyard was covered in twine.

We're sorta like orphans, but really that's fine.

Because Holly's an elf and can't stop buying gifts

and Alise makes excellent company riding the lifts.

Tod keeps the house fully stocked up on bread

and Mugsy's the best dog ever, fur rusty red.

Kirk builds a snow park out in the back hill 

and if you need a friend to give you a hug, just ask Rich, he will.

When it comes to painted long boards, Beth is the best

and Gwen is always chipper even when she doesn't get rest!

We were all home together, a magic event

opening presents not discussing the dueness of rent.

The fire was roaring and we were all toasty

Everyone was awake and engaged, mostly ;)

 

And then in a twinkling, I heard fill the air

The gasping applauding as Alise jumped on the stair.

The Trident she gambles giving that one gift back

The trust she has in all of us is something I lack.

The basement dwellers revealed a gift not close to small

a pingpong table that will make us the envy of all.

The evening grew late and we peeled off to bed

Visions of first tracks, danced in our heads.

 

To my Vail family: I love you, you guys are all right.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a goodnight!

Skiing!

The Reason We All Live Here

Some real snow fell this week and I decided that the time for me to start skiing was long overdo, so I wake up early on Thursday morning (well, before 9 am), dig out my ski gear, and stumble out the door.

On the bus, I'm strangely nervous.  

Vail's a huge mountain. What if I get lost?

Here's a tip a good friend told me:

In the event of getting lost on the mountain, 

 Ski downhill

My doubts are assuaged.

I jump into the Gondola, crying, “Good morning!” to the guys on the opposite bench, ready for a cheerful conversation on run conditions.

No answer.

They presumably do not speak english. That's fine because I know I will soon be looking at a scene that, though familiar, will make my jaw drop and cause a sigh to escape my lips.

At some point this fall I had forgotten the top of the mountain, but now I remember. THIS is why I live here, because any day I like, I can strap myself into rigid plastic boots that make my toes go numb, clip those into two long sticks, and throw myself into this:

Sigh.

At MidVail, I clip into my skis and slide over to Chair 4.

I skip past the layers of people waiting by strolling through the singles line and end up on the lift with a couple from Connecticut.

“Oh, I live here,” I tell them. No big deal. “I think I'm gonna go find some bumps, you know, to warm-up a bit.”

They are impressed.

And jealous.

Unfortunately, I'm a little too confident getting off the lift and accidentally ski over a bright orange and entirely visible cone and were it not for some excellent one-foot acrabatics, would have fallen on my arse directly in front of the chairlift. The couple from Connecticut skis around me.

 Er...I meant to do that.

"You got this," I chant to myself and start down the hill. I'm making some turns, feeling my edges, staying upright. Then I get to the bumps. Suddenly, I'm actually going fast so I skid to a stop. I pretend to look back uphill as though I'm waiting for someone. Really I'm just trying to catch my breath and slow down my speed so that I'm not really skiing, but jump sliding down the hill with limited style.

At least I am warm. Sweating in fact.

Halfway down the hill, I pause and look around. The only other skiier on the run is a gentleman in gray. He's obviously suffering, more than me. Confident local attitude now gone, I decide to go for the friendly gaper, 

"This altitude sure gets ya doesn't it!?" I shout at him, as though I haven't spent the last 12 months in Vail adjusting to 8,000 feet.

He ignores me. I pizza, french fry down to the lift.

I wait patiently in the singles line, ready for another go, though slightly bewildered: turns out, running and practicing yoga all summer did NOT automatically turn me into a great skier.

Isn't that odd?

Sophmoritis

Sophmoritis

Being a regular does not make you a local.

Hanging out at Loaded Joes is something I do far too often. It is an experience, let me just take this moment to say, that has gone down with the recent installation of bolted bar stools, replacing the free standing, hand-painted chairs I had become accustomed to. Seriously, the new ones lack any sort of character whatsoever. I've been thinking of switching my bar to Altitude, they have free pool after all, but it's such a LONG walk—ten extra minutes at least—and getting regular status is really a lot of work and I'm not sure I'm up for it.

I suck at pool anyway. 

There are a lot of perks to having a regular bar, the best of which is that you get to know the bartenders and that's nice because then you can walk into the bar anytime after work (or before/on a smoke break) and be able to chat with at least one person. Sure, in some parts of the world, going to a bar by yourself might seem a touch sad and lonely or possibly represent the beginning manifestation of mild alcohol dependence, but in Vail, it's just a cultural experience.

This is what I tell myself.

 

Ahem.

So I'm sitting on one of these terribly uncomfortable and soulless bar stools chatting with my bartending buddy, Joe, when a bouncy Burton clad rider chic strolls in. She's obviously new and very excited to be here.

“Hi!” she exclaims to Joe, “I'm New and Very Excited to Be Here from Somewhere Not Nearly As Cool As This Place! I work at many recognizable places in the village that I want to tell you about so you know that I am now living here!”

“Wow! New and Very Excited to Be Here, it's great to meet you!” Joe exclaims—she's very nice and enthusiastic in almost all situations, unlike me, who is snorting into my beer, “What can I get you?” she asks the girl.

 “We need some shots! Whiskey! And do you have something for locals!?”

Silly girl, I find myself thinking, You've been here what? Two weeks?

“So...whiskey?” Joe ignores the local question.

That's right, I say in my head, No local special for you newbie!

Then I start to consider what's actually going on in my mind.

I've been here ONE YEAR. You don't get local status in this town until you approach ONE DECADE. And at that point I'm sure there's some sort of long, secret, application procedure.

I realize I have been suffering from a momentary spell of Sophmoritis, a condition where newly risen Freshmen believe they can now run campus. It's a dreadfully awful disease, leading to all sorts of embarrassing encounters and incremental losses of self-respect. 

It's quite contagious. 

I need to be careful before some upperclassman steals my lunch money.

I change my message from one of derision to one of welcome:

Freshie, you and I are the same. When it comes down to it, I am still pretty new and quite excited to be here.
Welcome to a place way cooler than where you are from. Keep asking for local specials my friend, eventually, the odds are you'll find one.

On The Catwalk

On the Catwalk

The mountain opened more than two weeks ago and I have yet to ski. I'm a touch reticent in the poor starting conditions because last time I skiid in crappy snow, I fell off the mountain while following a terribly advanced and technical line, and tumbled into a steep ravine with my life flashing before my eyes. It was a close call but I was fortunate to come away with only three broken ribs.

Ok, admission:

I didn't fall off the mountain, I fell off a catwalk.* And I didn't tumble into a steep ravine because about ten feet off the catwalk, my fall was broken by a very nice rock and friendly tree. I did fracture three ribs.

It hurt like, a lot, and I spent the entire night at work going to the bathroom every hour to make sure I was not pissing blood and when a week later it still hurt, I went to the doctor and he says, “Golly gee, you've got some breaks in there, congratulations, and take it easy for the rest of the season,” along with handing me a bill for three-hundred dollars. 

Awesome.

So in an effort to save some pain for my body, my wallet and my pride, I'm waiting for some actual snow (the kind that doesn't fall out of a snow gun), so that the conditions are a little more conducive to safe skiing and so that the chances of me tripping over a rock/dude bro, crashing into a tree/dude bro, and breaking three more ribs, decreases just a little more.

Alise says I'm wrong. She says, “You should really ski as much as you can now, so when there is snow you'll be good enough to just enjoy it.”  

Faulty Logic.

The odds of me becoming a good skiier, even if I hit the ribbon of death every morning for the the next month: slim to none.

Today I'm going to yoga. No one EVER gets hurt in that sport.**



*Let me just say in my defense that the said catwalk (Sundown), was right after I made it down Seldom, and let me also say that in this particular run I only fell down twice and lost my skiis once. At this point I am quite proud of myself and let my guard down on my happy way to chair 5 when a patch of slush jumps out a bites me, and there I am, making an airbag out of a rock and besties with a pine tree.

**Q: what gets yogis panties all up in twist?? A: this article  How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body

I Love Vail, But I Didn't Always

“Vail is just a ski resort town, lacking any real small town character and I'm not sure how I feel about it.” 

-Journal entry: November 20, 2011

A year ago this week I find myself in Vail, Colorado for the first time and I do not think much of it. My friend Alise and I had been hitchhiking around the country, searching for a place to spend the winter. 

What we want: a little town with a great coffee shop, good scenery, and some folks who aren't obsessive snow freaks

What we do not want: an adult disneyland built next to a busy interstate filled with dudebros and functional alcoholics 

Our last night in Vail we go to a party at a CouchSurfer's condo. Three guys live in the place and it is a serious mess. Beer bottles piled in the corner, dishes overflowing in the sink, something sticky on the table...I sit on the sagging couch and try to keep my feet off of shag carpets that I suspect haven't been changed since the place was built in the 70s. 

“Thank god we're leaving,” I write in my journal the next day as we head to Boulder. “Vail just doesn't feel right.”

 Ten minutes later, the Sous Chef from Terra Bistro calls. I had gotten his number from a friend and knew he was hiring a pastry cook. The chef wants me to come in for an interview, and because I can't say no when I'm flustered, I say yes, despite the fact that we are now several hours away and had no intention of returning to the Vail Valley EVER again. 

I hang up, wondering what I've just agreed to, but then something changes in the night--no doubt some sort of prophetic dream--and I wake up the next morning thinking, “You know, I could really go for that job.”

We head back to Vail the next day. 

This time we stay. 

I take the pastry position, Alise takes a job at Loaded Joes, and we rent out floor space for our camp pads at the CouchSurfer's condo, make great friends with our dudebro roommates and cry a little bit when the season ends and we have to move out of our 70s swinger house. 

What do you think of those odds?