Today started by aggressively carpe diem’ing the opportunity to catch up with an old friend and intermittent colleague when he reached out in the latest iteration of our playing scheduling tag over the last month.

I claim no rhyme or reason to the exact timing of our our chats but we manage to arrange them roughly every three to six months and today’s rambling and revelatory ninety minutes on the phone while I tidied the house whilst amused by the cats who were amused by the birds who were delighted by the proffered buffet serves as an exemplar of why we keep making the effort.

At some point thereafter I got the idea into my head I ought go play at Alta in the recent dump and found myself with the challenge that the HOA’s plows had not yet reached the driveways of my street. Fuhhhhhhhk… I didn’t imagine that trying to reverse launch my WRX out of the garage directly into a foot of snow qualified as brilliant so had to choose between bailing on skiing or solving the problem myself.

Then, as I’m preparing myself to venture out for some DIY driveway clearing, I have a mild freakout at the thought that maybe someone had been thinking about breaking into my house by way of the sliding glass door in the back…

As it turns out it was just neighborhood friends who do triple duty as cat sitters and paragliding partners in crime doing exactly what I had suggested a couple of days ago when they were going stir crazy while similarly trapped indoors for a blizzard. They had come to my backdoor to see if I wanted to come outside and join them in the frivolity…

Something I had suggested on the basis of having scouted the opportunity a couple of years ago when I was being tortured by snow too plentiful to travel to enjoy…

So now it was decision time and daylight was burning. If there was any chance I might have been tempted to bail out of laziness that was countered by a need to get some exercise, shit any exercise at all, as a marathon EOY push on a contract followed by a blizzard trapping me in the house was causing me to go FUCKING CRAZY, and so…

Keeping an arctic battle tank as a housemate is a bit of a commitment but anybody who has ever said “all good things come to those who wait” never found themselves at risk of missing a skiing day because the contracted snow clearing folks were behind the curve. I love this Honda as much as I loved my last Honda (Accord). After a quick victory lap with The Beast to help a neighbor finish the swing on their own DIY driveway clearing adventure I hopped in my car and sped away…

I’d be lying if I said the skiing conditions were objectively great today. The “powder” on offer reminded me of the wet stuff you get from a fresh dump at Whistler/Blackcomb and the visibility was terrible.

But that’s beside the point even if you account for my being desperate for some outdoor exercise and frivolity. Skiing, much like flying, varies greatly from day to day in its quality and character on the basis of weather conditions. On marginal days you can either stay home and lament that conditions aren’t ideal or you can “go to know” and treat it as an opportunity, among other things, to find some way, by hook or by crook, to grow your library of experiences and repertoire of techniques. Today variously offered “skiing by braille” where you’re ripping over moguls quasi-blindfolded while relying on spinal-cord optimized reflexes (at one point I started singing ominously to keep people away) or “mashed potatoes delight” where you’re managing the competing tensions of “will I make this turn?”, “will viscosity variance make me superman?”, and “will I get marooned in this gully because I chickened out?”. In all cases I strove to recast the experience from an unglamorous suffer-fest to a game of “can I ski this?”.

Maybe one day I’ll get stuck in a Type-III adventure where I have to ski a thing and this deep bedrock of practice, akin to paragliding’s SIV, will save my ass. That seems all the more probable of late as I just purchased my first set of alpine touring gear.

Better to make your mistakes when your life is not (as thoroughly) on the line so that when it is you’ve already practiced the shit out of things…

Unloading at the top of my final chair ride which I boarded just two minutes before last call I heard one hardcore person look at the following chairs and be like — “What is up with all these empty chairs behind us? Do people hate skiing?”. Turning around to see the speaker I saw some badass wearing a full body pink suit whom I don’t know but certainly recognized. “Whoah, people aren’t gonna miss you” some other rando remarked to him regarding his apparel. “Gotta dress like that or have a beard like this if you want to be recognized”, I chimed in.

“So many people posting on Instagram about today but where the fuck are they?” pink suit guy observed. “Coming out just long enough for one shot that they go post from the lodge”, I replied. “Fuckin-A”, pink suit guy agreed as he slid past and fist-bumped me. “You, sir, have the best beard I have seen in all five of the days I have been skiing here” replied the other guy before we all parted ways and I closed out the day with a final High-T run.

Finishing up, sampling the best of “skiing by braille” Alta had to offer, I almost ate it right before getting out of my skis thanks to a large mogul operating in stealth mode just dozens of feet before the parking lot. “What the actual fuck?“, my L5-S1 disc bemoaned in the wake of the bouncy flailing violence.

Then, just as I’m about to leave, some guy, I think his name was “Justin”, be like “whoah, the beard, man I gotta get a picture of that! No, wait, now I gotta get a selfie with it!”

“OK, now make a silly face!”, Justin said. “I’m always making a silly face when I look like this!”, I replied.

Then, just as I think my day is now finally at an end, some random woman walks past and is like “What is going on here? I want in!”…

“OK, now make a silly face!”, Justin said. “We’ve been over this! I’m always making a silly face when I look like this.”, I replied.

As the woman walks away Justin realizes, to his horror, that he didn’t have her AirDrop him the shots she got on her phone that she had AirDrop’d to me, and then when I try to AirDrop them to him my phone can’t see his, so now I find myself doing mountain-side tech support on his phone as he is panicking over the possibility of losing out on the souvenirs of a lifetime…

My quads burning, not just from an afternoon playing in the heavy stuff but exacerbated by having to adopt a “deep lunge” posture just to fit in the group selfies, I made my way back to my car, highly amused by the evolving beard-feel I was experiencing as I progressed through altitude-driven climate variations…

The most extreme of which was the transition to sitting in a car…

What a day bursting full of unexpected joys!

Nothing compares with the tired-but-happy sensation of ending a day like this when your blood feels as if it were infused with warm honey…

I thought today was just Monday but instead it was full of magic and wonders that made me feel connected to the universe.