WhutsHappening

Top 5 Reasons Why SoCal Riding is Better than Anywhere Else

Top 5 Reasons Why SoCal Riding is Better than Anywhere Else

5. They have the parks down to a science. The crazy shit these rake-wielding bastards come up with are unnatural, frightening, and often the type of shit a sane man’s nightmares would be filled with. But for the shredder with his shit dialed in as well as the young jibber looking to improve quickly, laps of the park will take you to JP Walker status after a few dingers. And even if the snow sucks, you can still have fun fucking around on the various creative booters, hips, jibs, and pipes. For those faint of heart, though, you’ll find yourself fucked up mad quick.

4. The nightlife. Everybody down here is a fucking derelict at one time or another. If you latenight it at the Block or get twisted with Wrightwood locals in a small cabin, you’re sure to have a good time. But even better, you can charge the hill all day, then take a quick après drive and find yourself on the Sunset Strip surrounded by the retarded, saline-chested bombshells (or, if you’re a chick, the rugged rich boys who run around town looking to please you with their money and life experiences) who frequent such a place. Other days, you can just après at the beach, catch a quick surf session after a day of shredding. Yeah, that’s kinda cool, I guess.

3. You fucking kill it. In destination mountains, like J Hole and parts of Colorado, people have to go a ways to get there so they take it seriously, charging it hard and spinning switch 7’s off 30-foot cliffs like you pull boot grabs. But down here, a lot of SoCal gapers roll up to the mountains who suck. Like, atrociously so; like you might have skied when you were 10. While they can get in your way, there’s also a certain level of pride you can take when rolling up, casually throwing a 3 or a 5, stomping it, and riding away knowing that most of the people on the hill know not to fuck with you.

2. Powder Days. People in SoCal don’t like to drive in the rain. And they don’t know how to ride powder. So not only do you get assholes who can’t make it up because their 80 thousand dollar German automobiles can’t handle the snow, but if and when they do get there they’re content  shralping the groomers with a few inches of dust or even continuing to session the park. You can ride whatever trees there are with knee-high fluff all day without hardly seeing a single other person except at the lift lines.

1. The SoCal Ski Bunnies. Ski towns are legendary for saddling a large group of active, fit, hard-charging fun guys with a small amount of fat, ugly, and generally un-fuckable girls. Sorry but that’s just the honest truth – when girls leave Jackson they’re ugly again. But in SoCal, all the beauties from such legendary metropolises as San Diego, Newport Beach, and Los Angeles dress up in their hottest snowboarding outfits and head up to the mountains to look hot and pro-ho it up. Sure they might occasionally get in your way when weaving through the gapers on the flat beginner slopes you have to pass to get back to the lift, though usually you'll find them spending most of their days at the lodge, sipping coffee and hot chocolate mixed with bloodies and cosmos. Their real time to shine is usually at night. And when you consider the prospect of charging good mountains all day and then charging hot tail all night – well that’s just the way it should be. A man shouldn’t have to choose between the mountains and hot vag. In SoCal, you can have both.

A Depraved Journey into the Rockies Pt. 2: Frozen Smoke and Drunken 3-Man

Continued from A Depraved Journey into the Rockies Pt. 1: Sleep-Deprivation

So now we were plugging for the mountains, Peter and I driving Dan’s car while he rode with his friends in their Jeep and all of us tired and refreshed and excited at what the world held for us. Route 70, winding through old mining towns like Georgetown which traced the sheer cliffs of the front range and past the turn-off for Golden where the Coors brothers are beer-brewing bastards and Loveland and all along rapping about nothing and smoking sweet herbs and hiding from the reality of our lives.

 

Then we were at Vail, drinking coffees and croissants from a skinny mountain-girl barista who was happy to serve us while Peter accosted a friend of his, a rich girl from CSU who had extra tickets she sold us for 20 bucks a person. We all proceeded to ditch her and load our derelict asses, dressed down in our finest snowboard gear while Peter clicked into two planks, and we were riding the gondola to the top.

 

Vail is a national treasure, an amalgam of massive powder bowls that weave back and forth through a vast ridge in the middle of Summit County though it’s also a tourist town long-since overrun by gapers and Denverites who ski in vests and button-downs and are too proud of themselves.

 

Still, it’s a good time and so we made our way to the newly-opened Blue Sky Basin, to Lover’s Leap, a thick untracked wall with a couple foot drop off a cornice at the top that turned into 5 friends laying in perfect wide curves with the frozen smoke behind us as we bathed in the white room.

 

At the bottom we found a little booter into powder and I launched an ugly 360 as I had not yet learned to throw a grab into my tricks. Then I threw an ugly tucked frontflip and though I landed neither I still felt proud of myself.

 

We descended through the trees, flat high-speed close-corner powder slashes and all of us were in Heaven but Dan who broke his shitt Morrow board as such cheap plastic-capped pieces of shit are not made for real riding. But with Dan being ever the optimist he just rode down with his tail broken, re-arranged his bindings and rode for the rest of the trip backwards with the tail-cum-nose duct-taped stiff.

 

The powder was amazing for a few days after Thanksgiving, surely better than any Sierra Cement a man could find at Big Bear. We rode hard and laughed loud and at the end of the day, as we struggled to catch our collective breaths and rubbed our sore legs we knew it had been a good day. We drove around looking for hotel rooms to find they had all been checked out for some wild international downhill competition and we were growing disheartened before we found a nice condo almost slopeside in Beavercreek and with Dan using his scheming ways to swindle the front desk clerk into a discounted rate, still pricey but what did we care? We were young scions of industry, golden children with all the potential in the world and fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke.

 

We drove to a little pizza joint for dinner followed by a run to the liquor store for Gentleman Jack and Natural Lights. Then it was back to the hotel room, puffs of the ganj, and heavy drinking to follow.

 

Dan invented a game called squirble which had no rules but instead we decided to take an existing game and just change the rules as we went along. What followed was one of the most raucous games of 3-man ever recorded in the annals of modern debauchery, with absurd categories and rude, racist, sexist, hate-filled rhymes and questions in which we insulted our own races and gender most of all.

 

Around midnight Dan jumped on an exercise bike in the hall and had an epic biking session. We knocked on the door of the French ski team, staying across from us, and then ran. We walked in front of the hotel, beers in hand, and peed in the snow and yelled very loud and saw a fox scurry by. And that night we all drank until the sweet death of sleep came as a thin layer of fresh snow fell.

 

We decided to ride Beaver Creek the next day as I’d never ridden BC. I found it flat and unchallenging, the perfect place for wealthy financiers from Southern California to spend a week at their condo cruising down the groomed blue squares and bragging about their prowess to their mistresses while their wives fuck ski instructors named Hans in employee housing.

 

Still, we found some tight trees the way that only Aspens can grow in perfect halls of trees with gladed powder turns . Even a day spent riding shitty terrain is better than a day spent doing almost anything else and when you throw friends and powder into the mix it becomes nearly ejaculatory, transcendental cumming in your ski pants.

 

Around 3 in the afternoon we convened for a last mountain meal in the base lodge. Beers and overpriced grill food. Then it was back in the red infiniti for Dan and I, still sporting our snowpants, as we chugged for Southern California on an Eagle Sunday afternoon.

A Depraved Journey into the Rockies Pt. 1: Sleep-Deprivation

The year was 2002. Murder was running rampant through the streets. I didn’t own a cell phone, as Verizon had dropped me for non-payment of a $1000+ bill. I was doing a lot of cocaine at the time. It was a great year.

 

Dan was a snowboarder who had a car and his parents’ credit card to purchase gas and supplies with. I was successful as a knife salesman and had a voracious appetite for the mountain. For this voyage we weren’t joking around. We weren’t making a day trip to Big Bear. Not even a long drive to Mammoth. No sir, we were going to drive from San Diego to Colorado for the weekend, logistics and limitations be damned and we were just young and crazy enough to make this a reality.

 

Dan picked me up in front of my classroom on Alcala Way. We had already loaded our gear into the back of his cherry-apple red Infiniti and he had spent the last hour picking up booze and weed. We stopped at a supermarket on our way out of town and bought a twelve of Mountain Dew for him and of Code Red for myself. Dan started off in the driver’s seat and after picking up Starbucks to fire us up I fashioned an empty Code Red can into an aluminum bowl and puffed strong.

 

I was feeling good and toasted when traffic slowed to a hault and we realized that the I-15 checkpoint was running. We opened the window, scared but not really because when you’re 21 and 20 you fear nothing, especially if you’d never hit any brick walls of consequence.

 

“Where are you boys headed?”

 

“Colorado” the stoned boy in shotgun said.

 

“And where are you coming from?”

 

“Uhh, back there, we’re from back there,” the stoned boy said, turning his head and pointing down the 15, at the end of which lies his college, the name of which he couldn’t remember.

 

“We’re from USD” the driver, a short distinctive man says, “Just going away for the weekend.” The pig points forward and neither boy can tell if he means for them to pull to the side or to just drive through but taking no chances, the driver feigns confusion and drive through. And then they’re out.

 

When I woke up it was2  in the morning. I had felt fine letting Dan start out and I hadn’t even though what that meant for me. Running with adrenaline and purple crystals and Code Red I was awake for most of the first shift, talking to Dan about our trip and the audacity such a voyage took and how we were the only men with real balls anymore.

 

I passed out for less than a half hour before Dan pulled over to fill with gas, threw me into the driver’s seat and quickly fell asleep in shotgun.

 

Now here I was, somewhere in the desolate wilderness of Utah where the 15 meets the 70 and I was halfway through a 12-pack of Code Red. The road took on that eery sentiment of another universe inside one’s skull where stalagmites grow down from midair and scorpions morph into armadillos which morph into boulders which morph into mountains as the sun begins to peak above the horizon, burning Eastward! My friend as I guzzle some more caffeine. In those days Dan was a drug-free soul and so there was no desire to subject him to the white demon who would have made me right at this moment. No, I had been driving through the night and my only choice was to continue on until my shift was over.

 

When Dan woke up we were just outside Eagle. My eyes were pasted open and I was craning my neck forward through the steering wheel, planting my face on the windshield to keep myself awake through the rockfields of Western Colorado. When he spoke to me I could only reply in tongues, gibberish. I was hallucinating a purple tint to everything around me.

 

I woke up as we were pulling into Fort Collins. In a dream we had pulled over at a gas station and in that same dream Dan ran in to buy jerky as I climbed into shotgun and in that dream I couldn’t even fall asleep at first. Not until Dan started moving and then the chemicals gave out, the great halls of light opened up, and I was off to another place where darkness reigned.

 

We were meeting up with two friends of Dan’s from back home in Connecticut. They were good fellows who enjoyed the high life, went to CSU, and liked to snowboard. I took a quick nap as Dan hung out with the kids. They woke me up with bowl tokes and I accepted this as a gesture of friendship. At that time I received a phone call from my ex-girlfriend, the VD referenced in previous stories, on Dan’s phone interestingly enough and so Dan took me to meet her for lunch but at the last moment refused to come out of the car as baked up as he was.

 

I was sitting at a table in a patisserie with eyes red and shriveling into my skull, reality pinching tight with a soft layer of foam between it and me and across the table were my ex-girlfriend, more of a raving bitch than I’d realized at the time, and her fiancée, a strange troglodyte from money with teeth like he’d been chewing rocks. His face reminded me of the cartoon Matt Biolos in all those old …lost paintings. Jesus I was baked. I could hardly hold a conversation. Damn you to hell, Dan, for ditching your boy in his 11^th hour of need, an awkward moment made more awkward by the THC running through my body and after eating as fast as possible and watching the hideous life that I saved myself from Dan came back and we returned to the house.

 

I was crashing hard. We would be meeting up with Peter in Denver and he was babbling about some indoor lacrosse game with free beers and I had to get ready. I could barely hold my head up, the darkness closing in. Then a pill of adderal appeared, somebody chopped the designer coke up and I snorted down a line of synthetics.

 

That night we found ourselves at a convention center in the heart of the mile-high city, watching lax-heads run around green astroturf during the inaugural game of the Denver Mammoths, free admission and flowing brews for all. The lights were bright. Walking through the hallowed concrete corridors of the sports plaza,  a crowd of 5 guys on a strange trip and the night before I’d been in class in San Diego, almost a thousand miles away. The wild west.

 

Peter was there, a shaggy-haired derelict friend from San Diego who had spent some time running into and through brick walls though always with a heart of gold. He would be coming up to Vail with us so he came back to the Fort Collins house where we drank brew and smoked green and then the night grew fuzzy as the world shut down for the night and I fell comatose onto the floor. Tomorrow we would be going to Vail. God Bless . . .

 Continued in 

A Depraved Journey into the Rockies Pt. 2: Frozen Smoke and Drunken 3-Man

Snowy, Drunken Turkey

Thanksgiving, that time of year when we gather together with family, friends, displaced out-of-towners you feel bad for, and everybody else you can cram into your house to stuff unhealthy amounts of rich, heavy foods into our cavernous American stomachs. Yes, Thanksgiving is a great holiday.

 

I’ve been cooking for Thanksgiving for the last 5 years, ever since I moved to Jackson Wyoming and threw down my first epic spread while my roommates hid in the other room and watched football. That’s the normal way to do it. Find a house. Get some friends together, don’t expend any more energy than you need to, stuff yourself.  That’s fine and for 4 of those years that’s been the modus operandi, All-American as apple pie and just as lethargic.

 

But 2 years ago we decided to change it up. Bec and I convinced two derelict friends, Mike and Brundl to accompany us up to the high country for a little shralping and turkey, Thanksgiving in Mammoth 2k6.

 

This is a guaranteed winner for those brave enough to try it. Get a bunch of friends together in a nice mountain cabin. Make sure it has a big kitchen and a fireplace, yeah, ample room for nefarious drunkenness. Hot tub is crucial because, fuck, what good is the cold if you can’t get in a hot tub? Throw in your parents’ epic 5-page thanksgiving recipe, from turkey to stuffing to creamed cauliflower, the peace pipe to be passed around like the Pilgrims and the Injuns, and a trunk full of food and booze. Lots of booze. Snowboards and skis too.

 

We left Wednesday night around 6 or so. We stopped in City of Commerce for Carl’s Jr. beside a Casino and then once or twice more for gas or more food stuffs on our way up 395, the desolate 2-lane highway that weaves through the western edges of the Mojave and up into the southern Sierras. At night you can’t see anything but you can sense there’s something outside the car that’s massive and powerful. An energy collects against those jagged peaks – Mt. Whitney stabs into an endless sky and  you can see it during the day from Lone Pine, though as we drove through close to midnight it was just a sleepy one-horse town with all the windows and doors rolled up, 4 tired SoCal travelers and a dog rolling through the Inyo National forest. We pulled into Mammoth Lakes close to 1:30, driving around in a daze to find the rental office where a late-night key was being held and then follow the map to the cabin.

 

It was a 2-bedroom condo in a complex by a chairlift that wasn’t yet running because of the dry fall, thus the cheaper rates.

 

The place was decorated in the finest of 70’s ski lodge chic, with old leather furniture like the kind grandma had, paintings depicting nature in low light and shag carpeting. Ina word it was perfect.

 

We all had a late-night beer and did whatever prep we could. Then we said good night and crashed hard.

 

The next morning we woke up to a big breakfast. Always good to open the stomach up before a feast. We helped Bec cook a few more things as Mike, Brundl and I ran around collecting our snow gear, checking our boards and gloves and all. Becca had told us she just wanted to hang out with Annie the dog, drink wine, and cook and, like the amazing woman that she is, she wanted us to have our guy-riding day.

 

The snow was shitty. “Packed powder” which means near-bulletproof and if only a few runs were open, as was the case on that particular year, any remnant of grooming was long gone, especially with the gapers who all converged on such a place at such a time. Still, it was snowboarding and there’s truly nothing in this world I’d rather spend a day doing than snowboarding.

 

I found a couple hidden “powder” stashes in the trees. The main runs were hell.

 

I’m going to preface this next part by saying that I’m stating a fact, not a racist generalization.  But the mountain was full of Asian snowboarders, many of whom were snowboarding for the first or second time. People like that, you know, the ones who turn sideways and slip down the mountain, grinding most of the snow off, can ruin a slope.

 

A friend of mine from work and her husband had decided to come up to the mountain. He worked for Fox mountain biking and, like most extreme sports industry men, was ephemerally young. When his wife got pregnant she bought him “Punk Rock Dad” written by the guy from Pennywise. He wasn’t that experienced on a board but made up for it with tenacity, balance, and drive. So while the snow was shitty and the mountain was crowded, the company was great and we charged it as hard as the mountain would allow. Working up a good appetite. Feeling the air blow by us as we flew mach ten, weaving in and out of all the gapers falling down and slowly learning to turn in front of us.

 

We closed the mountain with Bloody Marys. By the time that Mike and Brundl and I made it home, Bec was almost done dinner and feeling great. She’d taken to cooking like an artist. It was her masterpiece and she felt the pride I had a few years before at putting together such a massive spread by herself.

 

We showered up and everything was done but the bird. We hadn’t taken into account the fact that a 25 pound turkey takes a little longer to cook at elevation. My friend and her husband, call them the work crew, showed up and we had a few beers as the dinner finished. As I said, they’re a few years older. They brought Jaeger thinking that’s what the kids drink. They were surprised when they found us drinking wine and scotch and listening to Sinatra. We keep it classy, that must be noted.

 

Then we ate. Plates overflowing with food. I ate seconds. Then thirds. We passed the peace pipe full of greens to commemorate the Pilgrims’ slaughter of the Indians

 

After dinner, the fire roaring and our food digesting, we sat around the living room and talked through food comas. I wasn’t very talkative. I’d eaten too much. I decided to go throw up. Afterwards I felt much better and even had room for pumpkin pie.

 

The work crew left as we smoked a final pack bowl and gave a final thanks for being with such great friends before the night won.

The next day the snow wasn’t much better and we were a little tired and still stuffed. We ate a quick breakfast of handfuls of stuffing and some turkey and Brundl, Mike, Becca and myself went to meet up with the work crew at the mountain.

 

IT was good having a girl for Bec to ride with and this is a tip worth noting. If there’s a disparity in the skill level between you and a partner, find somebody of a similar level and gender to ride with them. It makes the difference between a fulfilling day of charging mixed with cruising and a day of frustration and possible break-up.

 

By the end Bec was riding the Gondy up with us and everybody was having a good time as I sprayed all the gasianpers sitting down all over Broadway.

 

We finished again with après Bloodies. That night we humped ourselves to the hot tub, walking in shorts down a snowy lane to a little wooden hut with warm waters to soothe the body and the soul. Beers spread around us, torn muscles aided and abetted by healing powers of the sweet herb and chlorinated warmth. Then we were ready for the night.

 

Our quartet met up with the work couple at Whiskey Creek. It was early, both in the night and in the season, and therefore there wasn’t much happening. A band of old people on instruments that looked awkward in their hands jammed out Rolling Stones to the 20 or so people there and we played pool and got to work drinking whiskey and ales.

 

Mike and Brundl began talking to a few girls. One was fat and affable while the other was thin and icy, the girl who acts like she’s too cool because she thinks that’s how you get the older kids to respect you. They looked young. Perfect for my depraved friends.

 

Eventually they left as did we and our sextet made the way to Lakanuki’s. While waiting in line, the girl from my work noticed her husband was growing drunk and snuck him out of line. Apparently he proceeded to throw up and pass out. They left the next morning.

 

While waiting in line the two young girls from the other spot called Brundl – or actually one of them did, the fatter one. He ran off and left Mike, Bec and I to roll into the Mammoth Mountain dance club, knocking back shots and Bud Lights with the only youth left in the city. We relished in the senseless waste of money for 4 days of shitty snow and gluttony and cheersed to the fact that it was worth every dime.

 

The next morning we discovered that Brundl had gone back to the girls’ vacation house. Her Grandmother was still up. The girls were 18. Brundl ended up playing cards and drinking with Grandma until 2 in the morning. The girl was staying in a room with her brother, an ogre of a man some might say. Brundl took it all in good nature. Her name was Bivia and he called her such when he woke up on her couch and said goodbye.

 

Mike, Bec and I were hungover as fuck. We woke around 11 to shots of rum and leftover turkey and mashed potatoes. Close to 1 we were tackling the mountain, by now a massive pimple of ice and slush and somehow the numbers of gapetastic orientals had increased exponentially. A few white kids who sucked showed up, too. As I lined myself up for a little park hit I saw an Irvine slowly swerve towards the trannie.

 

“No, he’s not stupid enough to try and go off this,” I thought. The kid didn’t have enough speed to make it to the lip much less to jump. Sure enough he plows into the thing. He scorpions going uphill, a freak accident I didn’t even know was possible, and at the last minute I have to change my trajectory, spinning an off-balance, irritated 3 while yelling, “Fuck you get the fuck off the mountain you fucking gaper!” at the struggling bastard before stomping it and riding away fuming.

 

That afternoon, in the last hours of daylight Bec and Annie and I went for a little jog through the woods. Annie liked that a lot, as dogs like it when they can commune with nature and stretch their legs. So do people. Thus the whole snowboarding thing.

 

That night we partook of the hot tub again and stuffed more rotting leftovers into our fatty faces. Bivia and her friend were coming over for beer-drinking and merrymaking.

 

I turned on gangsta rap because I figured that was what the kids liked and we played asshole. The other girl, not Bivia but the too-cool-for-school one, put on Led Zeppelin instead. I like Zeppelin. The girl tries to act old and wise as we’re all our wisest and most worldly when we’re 18.

 

The night draws to a close and Bec and I consecrate our bed again.

 

Mike and his girl engage in some heavy petting on the coach. Brundl and Bivia, who we discover is actually named Vivian, hook up but mostly cuddle in his bed. It’s a good, wholesome night of drinking and puffing.

 

The next day we sleep in. We check out and Bec posts up in the mountain bar nursing Bloody Mary as Mike, Brundl and I decide to go to the mountain for a few runs. I teach them how to clip tickets from people leaving their day. For 20 bucks total the 3 of us get tickets that let us ride for 2 hours and although the conditions are beyond shitty the price is right.

 

We end our trip with a stop at Grumpy’s for the Indy game, a pitcher or two of beer and linner. As we walk out to Brundl’s Jeep we spot a storm on the horizon. It was going to snow, just after all the gapers leave to reward the locals for their hospitality. I envy them.

 

We stop at Convict Lake for a cold blunt-smoke lakeside and a final appreciation of the alpine. Then it’s homeward bound, 4 weary travelers and a dog who doesn’t understand why we’re leaving the clean air and the fresh feel of the mountain for the lowlands.

 

We get home close to 9. Mike and Brundl have another hour and a half and I feel bad for them but not so much that I’m losing any sleep. We share goodbye hugs and say this is a tradition we need to do every year though we haven’t since because it was a lot of money to spend for crowded, shitty snow.

 

But when the opportunity presents itself, I’d be happy to start the tradition back up and this time not stop. Early season riding is fun not because of conditions or any other factor but only because it’s good to ride early in the season.

 

Thanksgiving is a happy day to be spent among friends. But when you turn it into a vacation it takes on a whole new dimension. It elevates it beyond one day of gluttony into a long weekend of memories, heavy boozing, and extremely welcome leftovers. And that, my friends, is something to be thankful for.

 

 

 

 

Out of Breath on Telemark Bowl, Jackson

A few days over 4 years ago your trusted Uncle Ryno moved to Jackson Hole for the first time. I say for the first time because I plan on moving back there someday, spending the rest of my life chest deep in fine Teton powder in my log cabin house with a hot tub on the back deck and a raging fireplace. In fact if you asked me where I see myself in 5 years I’d have to say in J-hole (or Driggs or Wilson, but ideally Jackson, most likely) writing my 4^th or 5^th novel, living with my beautiful blond wife, a couple Malamutes and various mutts, and probably a little rugrat or two running around. A happy life.

 

Anyway, back to my arrival in Jackson. The adventure began a few days before Halloween and a few days after I met some drunken girl in a bar in Canton who would forever change my life. I drove to the old trapper’s valley city in Wyoming in 2 and a half days. I would’ve made it in 2 but in the 12^th hour of the second day and chugging down rte. 80 I decided to smoke a joint as the temperature dropped so low I had to put on gloves to drive my ’86 Bronco up mountain passes. A blizzard set in as the Bronco whined at a top speed of 60 and I had to pull into a hotel because I couldn’t tell if I was going up or down.

 

2 days later Josh and I found ourselves driving up the pass, a windy mountain road that connects Jackson Wyoming to Driggs Idaho, just past the Stagecoach Bar nestled at the bottom. We pulled over at the makeshift parking lot where other cars were parked and started walking up a small boot pack and then setting a pack through the knee-high white to a little starting spot just above where a couple kids were building a poppy little kicker.

 

I learned a good lesson that day. I had hiked midway up to the bowl. I stopped, breathing heavy as soiled cityboy lungs fought to adjust to the lack of oxygen. It was time to strap in as I catch my breath so I put my board down on its bottom. The thin air and extreme exhaustion made me temporarily forget why we used snowboards – that is, to ride downhill in the snow. But this lesson re-impressed itself into my brain when the board took off down the hill, myself swearing as I set off running, more like hopping through the deep pow as my old K2 Doublewide embedded itself in a ditch a good hundred yards below.

 

I retrieved the old fat green plank and sprinted back up through the same deep snow. True introduction to the mountains, trial by fire in snow the color of heaven, as one would imagine it. When I got to where Josh was standing with a day-after-booze-filled smile creeping across his face, I continued pushing up as if nothing happened. I stopped just once to throw up a decent chunk just to the side of my tracks.

 

Finally prepared to hit the jump, I rolled down, losing visibility as the snow was blowing. In the end I missed the kicker completely. Some kid said “At least your approach looked good” and I waved, apologetically, and Josh and I decided to hike the bowl.

 

Later we would come to find out it was called Telemark Bowl. But that would be later on. On this day we were just explorers, two cityboys making our ways into the wilderness our first time. Frightening and titillating and I’ve never felt so free before or since. We didn’t even know about slides though that’s about as good a first backcountry spot to hit when you’re avalanche unawares. Once we were high enough we both strapped in and set off.

 

MY first 2 turns, before it got chopped up lower, just two perfect pure arcs through an empty canvas, I knew I’d found heaven. At the bottom we jibbed around a little popping over a knocked over log and staring up at the sky.

 

Then we were good and tired and ready to get our drink on. On the way down we ran into a couple hitch-hikers looking for a ride back to their car at the parking lot. The girl, it turned out, was a McDonough graduate. She knew mutual friends of mine. It was our first hitchhiker – and as luck had it, she left her hiking poles which I claimed for myself.

 

That season would go on to be one of the great turning points in my life. The time when I realized I had to accomplish something for myself. That I couldn’t keep fucking around anymore. That I could only return to the mountain once I’d earned it.

 

Still – those early days – the ones of discovery, of the open white canvas so full of possibility and what we would accomplish. That is what life is lived for. That is what I miss. That is what I yearn to return to. The open canvases, the grand skies, and mountains that reach in all directions towards the horizon.

LOTS TO LOVE IN LAKE PLACID (Upstate NY Part 3)

Continued from Brews and Clues

Lake Placid is paradise. If you can handle long periods of extremely cold weather you can live there and be in heaven all year round. It is a mini Lake Tahoe with no gambling for all you wild westerners. I went there for delicious craft beer, legendary sports history and some great live music. Two of my favorite brewery-restaurant combos, the 1932-1980 Olympic Museum, and the Snoe.down music festival were all on the books on that sunny day late in the thick of March Madness.

12:27 After a beautiful drive I found myself entering the quaint town and headed straight to Lake Placid Pub and Brewery for a beer sampler and some eats. It was a heady place full of interesting locals and the diverse festival crowd. I had six excellent beers placed in a unique wooden tray and a delicious meal. The standouts were the Ubu Ale, their deep garnet red, English Strong Ale named after a a trusty hound, and the Frostbite Ale, a tribute to West Coast-style American Pale Ales with a great scent and aftertaste. Their offerings were all fresh, quality brews with pronounced scents and top tier taste. The rest I ranked in this order: the deep copper 46'er Pale Ale, the smooth Sunrise Stout, the crispy golden Moose Island Ale and the roasty Imperial Stout. Check the website for info on their regionally popular beers.

01:39 I asked for a tour and one of the brewing assistants was glad to show me around. In a small brewing space they manage to make magic. I checked out some live yeast and got some great shots of their equipment. The guy was so good I tried to tip him but he wouldn't take it so I thanked him sincerely and headed to the Olympic Complex.

03:11 The main hockey complex, called the Lake Placid Field House, was my next stop. I got a thorough look at the two rinks 195 196 and ventured back into the showers and locker rooms to get the Olympic athlete's full insider experience. Then I was off to the Lake Placid Winter Olympic Museum where I would learn all about the 1932 and 1980 Olympics. I left full of knowledge and appreciation considering I'm the opposite of a winter guy and know very little about anything that involves heavy clothing.

04:02 Great Adirondack Brewing Company was on my way back to the lodge and I could not wait until the next day (when I planned to tour the facility) to sample their suds. So I popped in and scheduled a tour for the morning on the way to the bar. There I found myself extremely under-dressed. It was a rarity, a fine-dining restaurant that had their own beer brewed on premises! I immediately noticed and enjoyed the classy Adirondack motif and the attentive professionalism of the staff. I was served well by a guy who had probably been bar tending for twenty years. I started with the sampler, lavishly presented in a hand carved wood carrier that trumped the one from Lake Placid Brewing. Check-plus honors went to the smooth-drinking Haystack Blonde Ale (5%), the perfectly-hopped John Brown Pale Ale (6.4%), the mildly-sweet Skyward Stout (5%), and aromatic 2006 Cloudsplitter Barley wine (9.5%). The check ranking went to the overly-sweet Adirondack Abbey Ale (7.1%) and over-hopped Adirondack Gold Cream Ale (5.5%). My least favorite was the Ausable Wulff Red Ale (5.6%) because I found it too malty and too sweet. I ate a delicious burger served on an English muffin with crisp, savory fries and headed back to the lodge for some rest and March Madness analysis on the tube. 

www.adirondackbrewing.com   

07:00  I arrived at the venue, the setting of the USA ice hockey team's stunning miracle victory over the Russians in the 1980 Olympics, and was just in time for the Brazilian Girls. They are an original and interesting band worth checking out live at any festival that they play. They played well but their sets always sound the same to me. The lead singer was very captivating as always but I eagerly awaited the Disco Biscuits. The Bisco set was top-notch and full of energy but one set wasn't enough. I needed more of the electronic untz that they effortlessly lace into the bass-heavy boots and bits. If you are near somebody say "boots and bits and" over and over while they repeat "untz" and you will know what I'm talking about. They frequently play rave-party music that they create as a live jam band which blows me away every time and leaves me wanting more. Thats what's so frustrating about seeing your band at a festival. Unless they headline you are left unfulfilled after the lone set. Lucky for me, the headliner of this fest was moe., a band who has played enough festivals to know this. To the surprise of everyone, they brought Bisco back out in the middle of one of their jams. The Biscuits came on stage one by one and each slowly took over their respected instrument. Once they were all up there on un-familiar instruments they dropped into Cyclone and instantly rocked the arena! I stayed until the end and was rewarded with the epic song called Plane Crash at the end of the encore to send me home happy.

                        

?? ??  The walk back to the lodge in the snow was refreshing but all i could think about was eating the deli meats waiting patiently on my open windowsill.  I was in an increadibly comfortable and well furnished room but it lacked a fridge so I had to leave my munchies in mother nature's hands. Once my sandwich was devoured I slid into my welcoming Tempur pedic bed, turned off ESPN News, and passed out

God Bless Upstate New York - stay tuned for the next voyage through the great upstate in The Adriondacks are Gorgeous

THE ADIRONDACKS ARE GORGEOUS!! (Upstate NY Part 4)

Continued from Lots to Love in Lake Placid

     I woke up and got the tour I alluded to in my last post. The Great Adirondack Brewing Company's facility was small but looked efficient and was scrupulously clean. I was very impressed with everything they had to  offer and wouldn't go to lake placid without stopping in for a beer sampler and bite of their gourmet fare.

       I wanted to see the Olympic Jumping Complex before I skipped town so I set my sights on the two giant ski jumps that towered over the area. The 90 and 120 meter jumps are steeped in history, with world records and metals won and lost on their slick, steep slopes. I felt like a winner on that glorious day, so I got a shot of me celebrating a gold.

       I arrived at High Falls Gorge and embarked on a journey through a long stretch breathtaking nature. I absorbed its history through many informative posts filled with facts and figures along the way. I took time to really soak it all in and snapped a shot of every sign for future reference. I didn't include many pictures because they don't show how beautiful the gorge was. It is a moving masterpiece of bright whites and gorgeous greens. When I reached the end of my journey I realized that I got good exercise from hiking all around the area and was ready for hours of relaxing country driving.

       My next stops would be in Jay, Upper Jay and various other little towns in the area. I am proud that my first name is the title of a city so I couldn't miss the opportunity to visit. Jay is also a street back in Utica that I have traversed. The whole region was very remote but seemed cozy and had a good country vibe that was welcoming and sincere.

       The weekend would not have been complete without seeing Saratoga Springs. Most people think of horse racing when the town is mentioned but it wasn't that time of year so I investigated everything else that I could. No offense to the sport but I have Pimlico Race Track right down the street so I get my fill at home. I wanted to get the most out of my short visit so I decided to drive everywhere I could until the sun went down. There is awe-inspiring architecture all over! On a human level, the town was very unassuming and the vibe of the locals seemed very relaxed but kind of boring. Saratoga seemed to have drastically more appeal to the middle-age and older crowd but that didn't stop me from finding a trendy looking downtown area to enjoy dinner. I struck gold when I found a thin artsy downtown restaurant named Circus Cafe. It was like walking under the big top without the snaggle-toothed, hideously ugly carnies and tortured animals. The interior was full of circus memorabilia and was very tastefully done. An original menu was served professionally by a smart, attentive and fun staff. I enjoyed my lemon chicken dish and had a local beer named after the city. My camera was dead from massive reps at the gorge so I just snapped a shot of the menu.

       A long, legendary day was unfortunately over but it left me satisfied with my journey and enriched with knowledge of many new and exciting points of interest. Welcome back to the land of the free and the home of the brave and stay tuned for the final day of this action-packed four day vacation that is taking me a month to write about!

The Poconos featuring cougars

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a few of my ski excursions to the poconos. If you had not read them, they usually consisted of a series of blurring events with an occasional ski session mixed into to it. This year was no different. It started off with a headache and ended up with a fucking migraine .At the end of it, I was more swollen then a fucking raisin.

I left work a little early that day to get everything ready. My mind was excited, but my body was tired. Something deep inside of me knew that this would be the type of weekend that I would be paying for until Wednesday. I was ready and packed on Thursday in anticipation.

My friend showed up around my house around 6:30, which evidently was perfect timing. Before she got there, I was rushing around for an extra pair of hats and gloves. The problem with trips involving different, yet essential gear like ski goggles and gloves is that you always think you forgot something. So after checking and rechecking everything we were on our way. I have this tendency that whenever Friday comes around, my body demands a grit. I have no urge or desire to rip one during the week, but when Friday comes, it’s as if my body changes. I become a vampire of the cig. Life is short, so why not make it shorter.

After a few cigs, a few red bulls, and a few laughs, she and I had to stop for food. We were as hungry as John Goodman after not eating for 10 minutes. After driving around in no man’s land, we found a little pizza joint called Jim’s Pizza. For being a little shit hole in the Poconos, it was surprising good. After crushing some good fucking shit, it was 10 and we yearned for booze more than Paris Hilton before she gets behind the wheel.

We finally arrived at our shithole of a place. It was as if someone took a house from the 50's and put it here for us to rent. It was also made for midgets. That said, it was a place to rest our heads and was able to accommodate all 11 of us. Everyone had arrived at around 11. The booze and cigs were flowing but honestly it was nothing like last time. It was more a matter of sitting around and getting fucked up opposed to running around and getting fucked up. I also did not smoke any ganj due to the fact that I get piss tested every week from an incident that included a drunken me, a jeep Cherokee and a goddam tree. This one incident ended up with my car on its side and 24 hours in downtown Baltimore City Central Booking, which is by far and away the scariest fucking place to be in. So anyway, I stayed awhile even though it was everywhere. Blunts and bowls were everywhere. That night we played a few card games like fuck the dealer, asshole, and chug the tequila. That last game, everyone wins and loses. They also had a pretty good sized basement, which contained a ruit table. That night we all stumbled back to our beds and called it a night.

The next morning my boy Tal and I got up early, which was actually 10, got ready and made our way to Jack Frost Ski Mountain. We had no idea of what were in store for. Now this mountain is a lot smaller than my usual stomping ground around those parts, Camelback, but since it was closer and Tal’s older brother and friends were going to be there, we sucked it up and hit that bunny hill. Jack Frost is a small fucking hill. There are a low number of slopes, which is probably why it was not that crowded on President’s Day Weekend. After a detour that included pulling the trigger, a Wawa’s breakfast sandwich, and literally buying 4 red bulls each we finally made it there at 11. Now, even though this mountain should be a fucking sledding hill, it does have a couple pretty cool characteristics. First of all, and probably one of the most unique parts of it, is that you start at the top. Therefore, after you buy your tickets, you can go riding instead of waiting a in line and riding up a slow ass ski lift. Another good characteristic is that they have two pretty good parks. They have a bunch of fun boxes, rails, and large sized kickers. I ended up eating it hard on one of the ways. The final great characteristic is the bar at the base called  E2000. I have no fucking idea why they call it that, but it was a great place to get twisted. We started off with a few Jaeger bombs and beers, and ended with the same. We were there for approximately 3 hours. During that time, we managed to almost get in a fight with the bartender, dance with random swamp donkeys, and meet a few cougars. We ended up befriending two 45-year-old drags of society cougars. In one way would one call these women classy. They would best be described as Britney Spears in about 10 more years. At around 7, we headed to their house for what they described as home made Italian food. When we got there, it was a sight. Our mouths dropped.

There were a bunch of other drunk people, ranging from age 20 to mid-40's running around dancing on tables, passed out on couches. Usually I would be all for a wild ambiance such as this, but this was not the crowd to intertwine with. It was hard to describe, but the feeling was like the one I had when I walked into my first cell in central booking. So after about 10 minutes of destroying their food, we learned that Big Boulder was a quarter of a mile a way. At this point we were pretty fucked up and 3 red bulls deep each. This does not include the red consumed in our drinks at the bar. So, after getting in the car and changing, we took a little strong through some woods, through a few yards, and down a street or two we were there. Due to the fact that Camelback destroys both Big Boulder and Jack Frost, those two decided to work together and provide a ticket for both mountains for the price of one.

I almost ended up pulling a sonny bono, since my incoherent self slowly moved right into a tree. Luckily, I pulled a quick maneuver and missed it by an inch. After downing our final red bulls, we decided to hit the park, which turned out to be the worst idea of day. We crushed ourselves on several occasions. We finally decided to head back around 10 to see what the rest of our camp was doing.

We finally made it back to a chill place full of high and drunk bastards. They had managed to break into the wood storage and gank as much wood as possible. A nice warm fire and a heated house is key after a long night of doing all of the shit that we did.

That night was similar to the night before. We basically hung around and got shit canned. At this point I was so drunk that I was sober. I ended up fucking that night and waking up sore tired, and hungover. We went to a restaurant called Murphy’s Loft for breakfast. I ordered the eggs benedict, which was surprisingly amazing. The hollandaise sauce was freshly made from scratch. They also had great french fries, and french onion soup. It was a great place for the hungover and weak.

We went back to the shithole, cleaned up what we could, and hung out until everyone could actually pass a breathalyzer. The cleaning involved fixing the ceiling that had literally fallen down, the large number of damp spots, and shoveling snow outside in order to cover the puke, piss, and something that looked like blood.

We finally made it back to Baltimore at around 8. I felt like shit until Wednesday, when my body had finally re-hydrated. It was my only ski trip of the season this year, and let me tell you, it was great.

Falling Down Miss Jackson's Hole (The Conclusion to a Skitown bender)

Continued from Firing Down Lines from Miss Jackson's Hole

We woke up with razors in our blood and fire in our eyes. It was Gaper Fool’s day, April 1^st, and it was time for the derelict locals to run the mountain, to mock all the squares who come to visit for a week of relaxation on blue square groomers and over-priced fireplace suites. I dressed up in a perfect gaper uniform of windpants and a Slim Shady wear thermal; Josh wore a pair of baggy khakis and a Timberland hoodie, emoting the redneck gaper inside of him. We stopped at Bubba’s for their working man’s breakfast – a secret heaping of eggs, sausage, potatoes, and an enormous biscuit, not offered on the menu and reserved for locals. It’s about 4 pounds of food and costs less than 5 bucks – but it’s not for tourists.

From there we rode up the bus, again using somebody else’s pass so I could go for free. At the base of the mountain, in the parking lot, Josh and I took our first shots. We’d packed heavy for today, looking to emulate a feat we’d accomplished 2 years prior. We killed a fifth of rum between us on closing day, taking one shot each for every lift. We also pounded a few beers, smoked salad bowls of kief, hash, dank, and a sprinkling of powder, and by the end we literally felt like we were flying on our last run down the mountain. This year, despite it being my re-introduction to the altitude and only the 5^th day of the season back on my snowboard, we figured we should one-up that feat. On us we had a fifth of Captain in a new plastic bottle, 6 PBR cans, a gram of blow, and a fresh joint rolled by the master, Josh himself.

We took the fun to the Gondola where the party had already begun, the locals descending on the hapless rich gapers like the caddie swim session from Caddie Shack. Lots of hideous old neon one-pieces and skiers wearing Starter Jackets and jeans. One guy was jabbering on an old fake cell-phone loudly the whole time he was in the lift line and on the lift, yelling fake stock quotes in a suit while skiing, the prefect joke on all those fuckers looking to turn Jackson to Aspen so their stock broker friends can ruin another perfectly good mountain town and turn the savage expanses of Wyoming into another Disney-on-snow Colorado.

The ride up, two gapers shared the gondy with us and we took turns making fun of them without them realizing we were making fun of them. Talking about how huge the hits in the kiddie park were and how epic the conditions were and how we were gonna tackle some of the epic blues and how we hoped we didn’t fall. At the top we threw on our gear, Josh and I passing the bottle back and forth to take a shot each, then charged down to Thunder lift. We were yelling like jackasses, gouging the snow and riding backwards but pretending it was an accident. There’s something so amazingly liberating about trying to ride as shitty as possible and/or trying to just appear like you don’t know what you’re doing. It’s fun to jump around act like a fucking idiot and in all honesty my favorite thing to do when snowboarding, whether gaper fool’s or not, is to throw myself around and really just play in the snow.

At Thunder we ran into an old friend, Lora, who was riding with Phil, I think. She was a ripping skier, one of the best girls I’d ever met and the only one I knew who actually skied a bit better than her boyfriend when I lived there. She was visiting from France or Switzerland or some shit (what the fuck – I move to Lagayna, CA, she moves to a European mountain – God I need to reassess my values) and wearing a bright turquoise one-piece. She and Phil joined the two of us and we rolled up the lift, a 4-person crew, passing the rum back and forth. Josh and I chased our shots with a beer each, then rolled down to the top of Thunder Bumps. This was where the magic happened. This was where everybody would line up, like some goddamned snowy Mardi Gras, all dressed as absolutely absurd as possible. Some people held to the theme and dressed like gapers. Some just dressed weird or wore ski race suits or some other costume, which in all honesty really fucking pisses me off. Goddamnit, what the fuck is happening to this world when motherfucking locals from a mothercunting ski mountain can’t keep to a motherfucking theme based around mockery of the bitch-asses who were forcing Jackson Hole to re-make their main entrance road because it confuses fucking retards who wonder why the goddamn road is "going past" the resort?!!! I don’t want to see some slore dressed like a moo cow unless overtop she’s wearing a shirt that says "Texas State University" or "Kansas" where the fattest gapers come from.

We stood atop, 4 stoic bastards exploring just how far down the rabbit hole goes. I had packed all my booze into my Liquid Lounger, a portable cooler backpack with speakers and an iPod jack built in. While we stood there I unzipped the padding over the stereo and switched it on. I turned on my iPod and began blaring hardcore punk music, getting fired up and ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence. Eventually there were people built up around us on the top of the run and we began to descend, like a swarm of drunken bees, weaving into and out of moguls with reckless abandon, consciously throwing out the window all the years of discipline and skill we’d accumulated to slip and slide down the mountain while drinking beers, yelling at each other in thick southern accents, eye up moguls for credit card airs that we patted each other on the back afterwards. 2 days before, on Josh’s skis I had tried a daffy with no air and nearly knocked the wind out of myself; but on gaper fool’s we were throwing our bodies around like rag dolls blowing in the Teton breeze. Josh and Lora specifically kept on running into each other, getting their skis tied up and taking a few legitimately painful hit and tangles. But with the booze flowing freely, the sun shining bright and the dismal, snowless winter almost over, we felt no pain. Again up Thunder and down the bumps, although Josh and I decided to lose Lora to do a few key bumps in the trees. Crazy creatures were all around, vibrations of debauchery I’d not felt in many moons and as my brain slowly shut down my instincts picked up and there, in those open Wyoming woods, my soul was beginning to return to the wild and for a few blessed hours I was free.

After a few more laps we decided to head over to Sublette and there we ran into Tyler. He was skiing in a big polka dot muu-muu with an umbrella and while it’s not mocking a gaper directly, Tyler’s whole life is one giant affront to gapers everywhere (the only Jackson local I know who lived there for a whole season and clipped or otherwise scammed tickets every day because he didn’t have a pass). He joined our crowd of merry pranksters, Lora disappeared, and I think Tyler, Josh, Phil and I did keybumps riding up the lift – but it’s hard to be sure because my brain was being scrambled and fried like that egg in those old 80’s anti-drug commercials and in reality the whole day was a haze. I remember Tyler hucking one of the rocks right above Sublette lift to everybody’s drunken cheers, holding out his umbrella, and watching as the wind from the drop blue it back and completely ruined it. He came up to us, laughed, threw the umbrella in a trash can and smiled as he said, "It’s my roommate’s." I remember some bowl tokes were in there somewhere. Again with the shots of rum – lots of rum – and more PBR’s. Eventually we decided to make our way to Casper, where the Gaper Day mountain party moves in the afternoon. Already people had lined up on all the picnic benches, big old pitchers of Boozy the Clown’s secret sauce. All the who’s who of the town showed up the freaks and the geeks all sucking on the tit of the Dionysian cow and laughing and smiling because they all knew that finally the miserable snowless season they’d all suffered through was coming to an end and while the year before had been nothing but epic skiing and riding to exhaustion, this season had been one enormous drunkfest from green flag to red. And I was proud to have come up from sea level and to be out boozing all but the best of them. Josh and I disappeared behind the Casper Lodge and restaurant for more key bumps, then came around to rejoin the party, kill the beers in our pockets, and order pitchers which seemed to be appearing out of nowhere as if sent by God to make sure we were good and drunk for Gaper day. Josh and I started pounding the rum, double fisting with a pitcher in the other hand for balance, and then, after all that booze and all those drugs, we decided that the best idea would be to do a few laps of Casper lift. Finally we finished the rum and downed the rest of a pitcher of beer with each consecutive lap. The mountain closed and we took it to the bottom, taking it to the streets, where they’d set up a big free concert in the parking lot.

We decided to duck into the Mangy Moose to buy a few PBR tall boys, the official drink of Jackson Hole, and walked around in the sunbaked mud and ice of the base where other drunken locals sat around, shirts off, sunning themselves and talking loudly and happily. We swung into the VC for a beer or two, the locals official apres nestled between my old jobs at the TGR offices and Wildernest Sports. We were  loud and bombastic, drunken fools are we all if nothing more.

The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering around. Tyler had gone to work, I think, and Graham had joined us or something. I really don’t know but what I do know is that that redheaded fucker who was the lead singer for the Spin Doctors was performing, a hippie burnt out musician in a crowd of hippie burnt out athletes, belting out acoustic versions of "Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong" and "Two Princes" and "Jimmy Olsen’s Blues" from the legendarily forgettable "Pocket Full of Kryptonite."

Eventually Josh and I were on the bus back to town, dinged out of our minds, drunk, high, completely twisted, our brains nothing more than puddles of goo sloshing around between our ears. I turned on the stereo in my liquid lounger and played the songs from the Jackson sequences from TGR’s "Soul Purpose" (premiering the year I lived up there) and "High Life" (arguably the best TGR and in that case big mountain ski movie of all time). "Rescue Me" by who the fuck knows and Boy Sets Fire’s "The Rookie".

Back at Josh’s house we took Phatty bong rips, then sat in the hot tub as the sun began to set over the Tetons. Slowly the drugs and the booze and all the shit was slipping out of my body and as Josh somehow went off to work, I was beginning to finally nod to sleep. Then Phil rolled in, began lining up some more of the ding, and then I was back in the thick of it, again feeling awake, again not being able to go to sleep until 2 in the morning.

The next day we woke up to a few inches of fresh powder. They couldn’t believe it. This morning was the first day it snowed in months. Everybody was amped, running around like a bunch of banshees, throwing on our gear, grabbing our powder planks, and climbing into Josh’s truck. He had been scheduled to work this day. In fact, he had been suspended from being a ski instructor for the last month for calling some little fucker an "Asshole" (after which the kid whipped out his little Razr phone, called his dad, and complained). Today was supposed to be his first day back at work. Josh decided fuck it and fuck them. No way would he waste the last powder day of a dry season for some little shithead children wanting to learn how to ski. No, we were powder fiends, on and off the mountain, and today we had a beautiful little gift. Today would be my big day of the season.

Graham was working the gondola so he let us up for free – the only person I know who moves to Jackson for half a season and still agrees to work on one of his only powder days – and from there we made our way to Thunder, then to Sublette and finally to the surface lift up Rendezvous Bowl. The used to take people up but now that it was gone, there was only a cold, windy chairlift that blew down most of the time. We thought it would be epic but other than the first few turns it was crud, just dusty on crusty and I was scared so would be the rest of the mountain. Thank God that wasn’t the case.

The Sublette woods were firing and we found knee-high powder stashes with almost every turn. We hooted and hollered, yelling out prayers to the gods for blessing us with one great day and I was sure it was a reward for our previous day’s intense rabble-rousing. If one pushes the human spirit and body to the limit, he is always rewarded, or so says Buddha, the Dalai Lama, and Gary Busey, my three spiritual gurus. Josh and Phil were hucking as was Tyler, decent 5-10 foot drops into a foot or so of thick Spring powder. We lapped Mushroom Chutes under thunder, then back to Sublette for a few Alta chute runs, a line or so down Expert Chutes, and the back to Mushroom Chutes where the snow was its softest and fluffiest. Graham joined us on a lunch break at Thunder and we were charging it, powering through the trees, mini white rooms all over, and I was throwing spray fans like I was surfing a frozen wave. One of our last runs through Mushroom chutes I found myself aat a particularly tight little drop at the bottom of which was a tree you had to turn at quickly and hard right after threading the needle between two trees barely 2 feet apart. I dropped in, layed in my edge to avoid the tree waiting for me at the bottom, and found my little powder trough was just a little dust on crust and instead of turning hard I slid helplessly against an ice patch, slammed into a tree, and scorpioned into an outcropping of pines with a dead thud and a slight snap echoing from my feet.

"Fuck" I yelled out and Graham rode down to ask me if I was okay. I untangled myself from the trees, looked at my board, slid down a little into Amphitheatre and sat down for a few seconds.

"Dude, do you wanna come down with me?"

"No, fuck it. This is probably my last day of the season, might as well push on." I’d hurt my ankle before the trip and had brought an ankle brace which I’d worn every day but this one. Now that ankle was throbbing. I met with Josh and Phil at the base and told them I’d eaten it hard. Graham testified to how bad it was, that he was afraid I was going to die when my helmet crunched into a tree. He continued down but I rode with Josh and Phil for a few more hours, occasionally complaining about my ankle but mostly keeping quiet and quietly wincing with every backside carve and every transfer to my frontside edge. Especially then. We made it over to Casper and ducked into the Palace for a spinach smoke and rode a bit more. The pain went away slightly but it was becoming harder and harder to put any weight on my front foot and trying to push through the pain was exhausting me even more. Maybe I’d finally hit my limit. We finished around 3:30 and I hobbled to the truck alongside Josh and Phil. Back at the apartment I took off my boot, wincing as it slipped over my ankle, and revealed a half-tennis-ball sized swell.

"Fuck dude, you weren’t kidding."

"Yeah. I think I might have broken one of the small bones in it. A navicular fracture, y’know?"

"Damn. Well do you wanna bowl toke?"

"Sure." We packed the bowl and made our way out to the hot tub, smoking in the free Wyoming air with the river running through it and ducks floating down, quacking under the fresh open air and the big high alpine sun. That night we mostly smoked bowls and drank beers. Josh cooked up a spaghetti and and meatball and garlic bread dinner and we relaxed. He and Phil were planning on waking up at 6 to hike Glory Bowl for the last powder faces of the year; I was done. My body was all but broken, my organs were shot, and my soul was going through painful withdrawal every day.

You see I’ve never been as happy, like completely sublimely happy and content, as I was when living in Jackson. Living in the lowlands, I’ve learned to ignore that and to mask my discontent under a façade of cheesy jokes amongst the working stiffs of society, pretending to care about the gapers I worked with’s tales of skiing epic corduroy at Mammoth, and to accept the societal conditioning that a lifestyle not focused on making money is a childish dream. But being back up there, I’m able to put it all into perspective and it’s like all those poisons, the false prophets and social ills that plague our lives when we work the 9 to 5 in the lowlands and still strive for the "American Dream" when we all know it died a good 50 years ago, had started to ooze out of my pores, like a spiritual master cleanse or a colonic for the soul, and all of a sudden I looked at my life and felt horrible about myself. What the fuck was I doing? Why the fuck did I pretend to give a fuck what all those losers at Wet Seal (and yes, basically everybody I worked with at Wet Seal was an enormous loser in the eyes of the grand universal watcher with the exception of 3 or 4 people) thought – why did I even want to keep my job there? Why was I once again pretending to be something I wasn’t? It was like Baltimore all over again.

The next day they left early and I just barely heard them as they stepped over me to gear up for the hike. I woke up, smoked a bowl, and went to work collecting all my shit that had become strewn all over their bare-bones apartment and packing it all back up, made ever more difficult because I couldn’t put any weight on my ankle. Eventually I found a few pain pills after hopping up the stairs to Josh’s bathroom, then forced myself to put weight on my ankle and keep it loose as I knew soon enough I would be hustling through airports and would need the ability to use both legs. Josh and Phil got home around 1 and we smoked a final bowl in the hot tub. I got out, threw my wet trunks in a plastic bag in my ski bag, said goodbye to Phil, and loaded my gear into the back of Josh’s truck. On the way to the airport Josh and I talked about how great it was seeing each other. I told him how envious I was of his life and how so much of me wants to live there but I knew I had to do something big with my life before I could return to the Hole and become comfortable and happy again. He told me he knew, from day 1 he knew Jackson Hole is too small a town for me and that someday, once I’ve achieved Hunter S. Thompson notoriety I’d return.

"But still, I miss you up here, bro. You gotta get back sooner rather than later."

"Well if I haven’t made some good steps by 2008, I’ll be back for the winter."

"First year the tram’s up, nice."

"Yeah man, for sure." He helped me unload my shit from the car. I had put my ankle brace on for the flight, painfully since I had rubbed my ankle and my heel practically raw from its seams and although it supported me it also dug into my wounds with every step. Still, it allowed me to give him a big hug and a wave, then drag my board bag, my suitcase, and wear my Liquid Lounger to the check-in. I got to the wsmall waiting area in the tiny airport and stared. It'’ the most beautiful flight gate ever, with wide open expansive windows that stare hard upon the Grand Teton, the highest point, a 2-day summit (or 1 for the truly hardcore) almost always topped with snow. I stared out into the majestic peaks and wondered again "What the fuck am I doing with my life? Why do I leave this for the hideous rat race, propagated by the everyday normal and the uninteresting of American society? The gapers? Seriously, why do I turn my back on this happiness and fulfillment for a dream that I’m not even sure is really mine?" I opened my weird metaphysical and anthropological book, "Sex Drugs, Einstein, and Elves", and read about one nerdy guy’s musings about all the random shit he knows and while it had been an eye-opener for some crazy kuunt I knew, it just seemed like a nerd with a little too much time on his hands for research. He was making connections many of which I’d already begun to make without spending years avoiding the arts of socialization and while interesting, I didn’t find it any more special than an encyclopedia. Essentially he connected the dots for those too stupid to figure shit out on their own. OK, the idea that DMT might not be a psychotropic drug but actually a portal to another dimension is kinda rad. And I liked the fact he brought up that the English language is really just a mixture of other languages. Still, I boarded the plane disgruntled, made my switch over in SLC, and ordered a whiskey neat. Good bye, Jackson Hole. Goodbye, my soul. God bless booze. I hate gapers.

Jackson Hole at the peak Pt.2

Continued from Jackson Hole at my Peak

The next day, was a family day, which is a lot different than hanging out with the Spears crew. It was actually a relief to not ski, since my legs worked liked my little man after a fifth of whiskey. After eating a large platter of eggs benedict at their hotel, we made our voyage to the great unknown. By the way, their eggs benedict was as untouchable as grotto in the Vatican. We then hopped into the rented Subaru outback, and made our way to God’s country, also known as Grand Teton National Park.We ate lunch at a little restaurant on the side of a national park. We then acted like a bunch of booming hippies and hiked around the woods without a final destination. We saw plenty of moose and elks, no black bears, but a surreal environment with no idea of where we were going. My advice for a ski trip out west is to take one day to just appreciate the earth Being from Baltimore, and living in Delaware and SoCal, I haven’t really seen mountains that were 14000 feet high. It was some pretty trippy shit. After our journey, we grabbed some grub at a little pizza, burgers, and beer restaurant at the base of the Tetons called Dornan's.

That night we went to the Wort Hotel bar in order to meet up with our parents. After a drink, we decided to spend the rest of the night just rolling around town with Ryan's friends, the sick skier hucker Colorado pothead Tyler and fired up powder charger Josh . Honestly, as much as I love the craziness and the extreme sporting that usually occurs on my trips, there's something that needs to be said about just moving slowly and see all aspects of the current destination. The next day we said goodbye to the rents and headed to the mountain. The rest of the week consisted of hitting the slopes and smoking ganj, which is similar to what happens at the X Games.

Each day consisted of hucking off of a different couloir and chute. Being the decent amateur that I am, I was able to overcome Corbets Coulouir , as well as, Spacewalk and the Mushroom chutes. That said, I did not do it gracefully by any stretch of the imagination. Since Ryan had been out there for some time, he would huck off of 10-20 foot cliffs pretty smoothly, while I on the other hand, would follow by going off full speed and landing on every part of my body except my feet. After going off one of those death ridden risks, your heart feels like you did a gram of blow after drinking 5 redbull vodkas at an oxygen bar. After hitting Corbett's and slamming hard against the wall, I had to make the painful Couloir climb back to my gear while Ryan sat in the legendary Corbett's cave just in front. Every now and then I would follow him the best I could while Glading where our pit stops would consist of local made smoking shelter. There were even communal rolling papers and pieces in them. Ryan mentioned them earlier - they're made during the off-season by local elves and have crazy curses over them that prevent gapers from finding them and punish those who are not with a local guide and don't leave behind a nug or something - so if you happen upon one, make sure you give a gift to the local elves or you'll break your leg later that same day.

The nights were basically the same, with a few exceptions. After a long day of riding, we would usually smoke some pot, cook a fatty dinner, and drink a few beers while watching a sick TGR movie. One night, I went to work with him ,which consisted of drinking 4 40's of PBR and watching raw skiing footage from different TGR trips. This was one of the most cushiony jobs I had ever seen. One night, Ryan and I went to one of his boy’s birthday party at an underground bowling alley in the VFW hall. It was a fucking sweet bowling ally, but there were way to many green heads. The obnoxious smell of patchouli and arm pit does not work for me. The Dude would have been pissed by the lack of respect shown towards a sport that loves freedom. The biggest event of the year in Jackson Hole fell on the last full day I was there.

The last ski day is a spectacle to be seen by all. If you think that drinking while skiing is cool, then Gaper Fools day is perfect for you. The day consists of dressing in ridiculous gaper gear and skiing down the slopes partially drunk and kind of stupid on April 1st, making fun of the gapers who actually dress and ski like that sober. After putting on my Todd Heap Jersey and a pair of large, old jeans, we killed a Bloody Mary and made our way to the mountain. It was a perfect fucking day. It was 40, but felt like 70 due to the closeness of the sun. There are many places to stop in order to get the fuel to continue the downward spiral that leads to the stupor. At the end of the day, the ski lodge blows up. You have to experience the scene to really get an understanding of it. Basically, hundreds of people were walking around with beers while a DJ spun some underground shit, there were plenty of blunts, and I even noticed a few half naked chicks playing in the warm snow.

After taking a perk, I headed home tired, sun burnt, and soar. The Jackson Hole spring break was an unbelievable experience. It was definitely one of the best trips I have ever been on. It was a very diverse trip, full of many different activities that melted together to create an ideal experience. There is nothing better than leaving spring break in better shape than arriving there.