Snowbird 2006
Well I'm back from Snowbird Utah, my 5th Ski Trip. Scott has posted an enormously long and time consuming journal entry on the experience, to which I would like to snipe-in the following comments. I'll state these in relation to the timeline of events described in Scott's post/page/long winded emotional diary entry into the innerworkings of his heart.
Day Zero: When the "sisters" decended upon us, my first instinct was to engage in the conversation in a way to divert the flow away from overt religious dialogue and into something tangentially related and time-consumming. Basically I knew I had to stall them while Scott went and got the car. Now, every Mormon I've met in my life has been very friendly and hasn't pushed their religious beliefs on anyone. These two Sister were no different. They simply were trained (oh yes, highly trained) operatives in the art of conversation steering. I tried to throw obstacles in their way. I poured out every vaguely art-related item noteworthy of interest I could remember from the gallery and the wax figures and such. I definitely got the drop on them and sent them realing! Adam's artsy training must have rubbed off on me. But they countered hard with an assertion that they didn't get most of what I said (i barely did!) and inquired if I was an art major. At this point I think I relaxed too much and left my guard down. They then asked what else we learned while we were there! Ack! In one or two sentences more, they had dropped the bomb and the cat was out of the bag. We were enemy units in the very beating heart of the monster. Nicole became concise at this point and refused to answer questions with anything other than a yes or no or a brief commment. I decided that we could still stall them while buying Scott some time with the car. One of the sister started asking why weren't believers and I gave her an earful of talk about how your emotions should be a reflection of what you value and I tried to couch the langugae in something familiar to her. She countered with a bible verse. Scott messaged me that he had shown up before she finished. We stood there and took the quickly read and rather uninspiring passage with courteous patience as we edged to the door and told the Sister that our ride was here. We escaped into the snowy night, eager to be outside the compound walls.
Day One: While Scott and Nicole were having their Italian Dinner with Wishing Tree Shiraz (which I later found to be slightly tart), I was slumming at Friday's, watching the SuperBowl closing show and scarfing on a Zen potstickers appetizer followed by a Jack Daniel's Pulled Pork sandwich entree and finally closing with a Cinnabon Cheesecake (sinnfully delicious!). I felt awful after the first day of skiing. My calves were sore, my cold was drowning me in body fluids and I had a mild headache. All in all, better than I've ever felt after a first day skiing! ;).
Day Two: While I always feel that not taking the slope down the mountain is a cop-out, I plead that I am a fat lazy bastard with little endurance, oh and I had a cold. I knew that I was at the end of my rope after doing the Mineral Basin so many times on the backside of the Mountain that day. After getting to the bottom, my chest congestion decided that it wanted out and preceded to request shore-leave for several minutes. We all crashed in Scott and Nicole's Room afterwards. My raspy breathing caused concern on Nicole's part, but was not seriously imparing my ability to breath.
Day Three: I'm still not sure how Scott convinced me to run a blue/black, but he did manage to. At this point in my sickness cycle I was getting some stomach and abdominal trouble that was, shall we say, providing motiviation to get down the mountain. I found that by having this motiviation, I was not nearly as concerned about tumbling down the mountain-side to my untimely death as I might otherwise had been. I took to the slope rather quickly and with no reservations for height, as I would normally have. I think this was not only caused by my previous mentioned insiprations, but also by the visual elements of the environment. This run begins in a rather large bowl concavity in the Mountain. There isn't anything to fall off of (once you are past the road sections, which I'll speak about at length later), and there was a long section of area with which you could bleed off excess speed. To me, this indicates a rather safe environment for some slightly feckless recklessness. I let myself get going faster than I would normally be comfortable with and as a result got down the first part of the slopes rather quickly for my tastes. The rest of the run was a series of controlled bursts that would culminate in a protracted array of rest stops; normal skiing for me. The bathroom at 9000ft was never more inviting. All in all that day was turning point in the trip and in my ailment. I felt less tired than I did the previous days and my cold was more pronounced.
Day Four: This day was actually quite good, even with the bad powder experience. I did the backside runs far more times than I thought I could. Even though, in retrospect I think that I could have gone down the front side of the mountain with Scott and Nicole, I didn't want to chance the possibility of doing something rash or foolish on the way down since I have another trip schedule for Sunday (to France, on business). I felt distinctly less tired on this day than any other. This, of course, could have been due to the side effects of the medications I was on, but I like to think that I was getting my wind, you know, after I needed it.
And finally I'd like to leave some general comments.
- My skiing style (the controlled skid or differential sliding) does not work at all in "powder". As such I detest it (powder) and refute any claim on it's awesomeness. It is quite unawesome, Sir; quite unawesome indeed!
- Roads turned into ski paths suck, ... hard. I'd rather ski a choppy blue/black run than hit a long 9% grade road covered in snow. These runs drain the very life from your body, much like a level 20 Lich would.
- Courvoisier is a man's drink; a Ladies Man's Drink.</wink>
Even if you can't get a room in the "The Inn" while you're nursing that baby skiing addiction, I would suggest that you take a trip up that windy Little Cottonwood Canyon road. All in all it was a great trip.
