The Great Bagel Caper

I'm not sure if this phenomenon occurred nation wide, but in the late 90s the Seattle area exploded with bagel shops. There was one on every corner; they were more common than Starbucks!. Then, as quickly as they had arrived, the bubble burst, and they were gone.

The collapse of the bagel market and the dot com implosion took place at suspiciously similar points in time. Did all the dot com'ers suddenly stop buying bagels, cream cheese, lox, and those little green ball things that everyone pretends to like? Consider this. While the entire stock market was being deep fried, McDonalds' stock kept on rolling.

Posh offices in vastly over funded, pre-IPO, dot coms for tiny cubes in penny-pinching insurance companies? Bagels for Sausage Biscuits and hash browns? We may never completely plug the hole at the center of this mystery.

And also, I skied today. The snow was a little hard, but not too bad. The sun was out the entire day. Oh, and I had an Egg McMuffin for breakfast, though I would have preferred a bagel.

About a girl...

A week or so ago, on one of the cold wet days, there wasn't a lot of joy on the mountain so I distracted myself by taking notice of, and skiing in relative proximity to, this girl. Let me be clear, this is not a euphemism for 'stalking'.

At some point, she went off my radar, so to speak, and coincidentally I went in for hot coco a short time later. And as I was standing close to the entrance of the cafeteria, in between the cafeteria and the restrooms actually, some woman practically ran right into me! But she was kind of cute, so I apologized instead of, you know, grunting at her. When I arrived at the coco machines, she was filling up and I used the machine next to her while, you know, trying to check her out while looking in the absolute opposite direction.

Anyway, I concluded my business before her and went to look for a table. It was a weekday, there were few people in the lodge so I pretty much just selected randomly. There were goggles and a hat on the table in front of mine and wouldn't you know it, those belonged to cute-yellow-jacket girl! She seemed to be alone too. It's uncommon to see women alone on the hill.

So, I'm skiing in the same general vicinity as this girl. She runs into me in the lodge. She's drinking hot coco and I'm drinking hot coco! I just happen to select a table that's right next to hers! And she's alone! I did not speak to her. I did, however, write the following in my notebook: It was as if the cold rubber-gloved hand of fate was sticking it's well lubricated finger uncomfortably up my ass; and instead of relaxing and trying to enjoy the moment, I pulled away.

It's amazing that I'm still single.

Yo, 'dis is my uncle Nickie

Crystal was insane - they'd gotten something like 3 feet of snow over the previous 48 hours.

In an earlier entry about ski lift socialization, I wrote that I had never been invited to to take a few runs with a random stranger but some others have. Well, that's all in the past now!

I was on a lift with a relative newbie teenage snowboarder and a grizzled old veteran with monster fat powder skis. The boarder was outgoing and all talk so we were having a conversation about the freshies and season passes and kids going back to school, etc.

Near the top of this particular list, off to the left, there's a nice patch of trees and the boarder started talking about how cool it would be to get a line in through there. I think about these trees often because they're right in my sweet spot in terms of steepness and tree density. But from the lift, it looks like all the possible lines end in valleys, so runs end in hikes out through thick powder. I rarely see more than one or two sets of tracks through the snow there, and I assumed it was for fear of the eventual hike.

It was at this particular moment that the the guy with the monster fat powder skis jumped in and says there's a traverse back into the regular trails if you get yourself down to just the right place. Further, he offers to take me down there and show me where the traverse is. Normally, I'd think that was a pretty phat offer, but there's three-freaking-feet of untracked powder down there. Now, if you haven't skied powder much, you might think it's a "the more the better" kind of skiing. But this is not necessarily so. And so the guy's offer had sort of a Double-Dog-Dare-Ya feel to it. But I could hardly refuse a double-dog-dare-ya, could I?

So Nick, his name is Nick, and I shoot down this small stretch through the trees in powder so deep that even the tips of my Sugar Daddys didn't see the sunny side. It was a rush - powder and steeps and trees.. oh my! Generally I like to limit myself to two of those (powder, steeps, and trees) at a time. This guy didn't stop to worry about the line before dropping in, as I would have, and it's great to ski with guys that will push you a little. I just followed him over the edge.

On the ride up he shared some intel with me about a few hidden stashes and gave me a few pointers about skiing in the deep stuff. We missed the drop off on the next run (because Nick doesn't bother to stop!) and ended up skiing an easier shot. At one point, this run splits with one direction going steep into the trees and the other easier and flatter. There were several people at the top of the tree'd bit thinking (tsk tsk) about it, but Nick just drove right past them and so did I.

The third run killed me. We did the steeps again and I took a fall. Falling is no big deal, but coming out of a ski in 3 feet of fresh powder can totally suck. I ended up about 10 feet below my ski which, oh by the way, had dug itself under the snow - no longer visible. Climbing up this kind of stuff is brutal. You have to use your other ski with your poles as sort of a hand ledge to pull yourself up, struggling to firm down enough snow to gain a couple of inches under your feet. Once you've found both your skis, it's no easy task to get the first one back on. Think pushing your foot onto a board which immediately sinks to your waist. More is not necessarily better. That was it for me. I had to go back to the lodge to defrost my goggles. And to think.

But 'uncle Nick' gave me a fun ride. I hope to run into him again.

January 12th, days skied: 16

They don't call it the "Pacific North Wet" for nothing!

There aren't many days when I get to the mountain, stand at the bottom of my first ride up and think "shit, should'a stayed in bed". But today was one of them.

There was no chance of gearing up by the car. Six inches of freezing slush covered the entire parking lot, and it looked like 30+ mph wind gusts. So I stuffed my gear into the boot bag, dropped a glove liner in the slush such that it would be configured for maximum absorption and left my poles in the car. Then I walked up to the lodge leaning into the wind with my chin at my chest to keep the freezing rain and sleet from cutting my face open (well, not really - but it was windy!)

To make a short story even shorter: I skied for an hour, had a hot chocolate. Then I skied for another hour. And had another hot chocolate. By that time, my ski pants were completely soaked through and my legs were carrying around their own portable slush pits. Between that, and the realization that I was probably putting on more calories in hot chocolate than I was burning, I decided to call it a day. It was a soggy drive home.

Oh, one item from the notebook. As I mentioned, it was wet. So on three different occasions, as a subject of small talk, I said something to the effect of "wet, isn't it?". And on all three occasions, nobody seemed to acknowledge this painfully obvious fact. One older guy pulled up next to me to rest, and I zinged him with my wetness query and he just looks at me blankly and says "no, I just needed a rest"! Resting will not make you dry, sir! At least not out here. After three tries, I decided to alter my strategy a little so on my next ride up, I tried "rough weather, huh?". My compatriot looked around as if trying to find some evidence to support my claim and says "I guess it's a little windy"! Keep in mind, we spent the next five minutes with our heads tilted against the driving rain, holding our storm hoods down lest we lose hat, goggles, and anything else not tied down. I'm not sure if they were in denial - and who wouldn't be after spending $50 on a lift ticket and $20 more for rentals - or if they just hadn't reached their first hot chocolate break yet.

On the plus side, my spiffy new Arc'teryx gore-tex XCR jacket was awesome. My top was completely dry all day. I had not, however, sprung for the matching $375 pants, and so the chink in my armor has revealed itself.

Gotta make a note to check the weather more carefully. The Crystal Mountain lift report in the morning said the upper lifts were open. I wouldn't go so far as to call them lying sacks of shit; maybe just handbags full of poo.

January 10th, days skied: 15

Dude! Let's party.. and shit!

I was eating lunch in a blissfully empty weekday ski lodge and catching up on some reading when a group of four 20-somethings sat down at the table right behind me. And when I say right behind me, I mean they had to move their chairs to squeeze in around me. I was an uninvited, and somewhat dissatisfied, guest at their table. Did I mention the lodge was EMPTY? Having been thoroughly distracted from my reading I did the next best thing, I pulled out my notepad and started taking notes on their conversation. I'll trim the fat and leave you with the white meat:

"Dude, that jacket kind of makes you look like a girl and shit. No, no, not that that's a bad thing, I'm not trying to insult you, or shit."

"Dude, Outback has the best clam chowder. They cut up the clams real small, not like those big ones and shit."

"Dude, I know why you don't drink. You always pass out and look all Christopher Reeve and shit."

Hop on the bus, Gus... but don't forget your fucking goggles!

After leaving behind everything from my poles, to my pass, to my iPod I've resorted to using a checklist in the form of an index card attached to my windshield visor. This has saved me various levels of discomfort several times already.

It looks like it's time to add another index card checklist to the underside of my car's trunk.

As I was packing up my kit this morning, I saw the shuttle bus blundering down the road so I quickly locked my car and ran for the bus stop. The fucker didn't see me. Or if he did, he didn't stop - double fucker. So I stood around for 5 minutes. Thinking. About nothing. Dead air. Finally, a mountain worker in a pickup drove by and offered me a lift. Not 10 feet down the road, it dawned on me that I'd left both my hat AND goggles in the car. I didn't have the heart to tell the guy to stop and let my dumb ass out of the truck.

As we got out, the guy pointed to the truck next to his, grinned and said "Check it out, that's a U.S. Government truck. There's a snowboard in the front seat. That's not right, is it'?" Haha. Your tax dollars at work, ladies and gentlemen.

So I stood there at the stairs up to the lifts wondering what I should do about my hat and goggles. Well, really, I wondering if the pickup guy was out of sight so I could safely get on the shuttle to go back to my car.

But I did have my sunglasses in my pack, so I decided to try a few runs with those before going on the round-trip of humiliation. The wind pretty near froze my ears off, but my jacket storm hood held enough warmth to thaw them out. I skied that way all day. It was definitely a 'hat and goggles' day, though.

The conditions were great. On top of the 7 or 8 inches yesterday, we got 5 or 6 inches of powder over night. The temps were very cool, so the powder was about as light as we're likely to see around here. I took one run off into a little powder stash in the trees where I promptly dug myself out a giant white crater. I got up on my one ski and put down my pole to get my balance - it sank in down to my ankle. Deep powder, and sunshine most of the day.

I would really like to get a small digital camera to record some of these moments for you guys. But I'm spending all my money skiing. So go ahead and ask me for my PayPal address if you'd like to contribute to the camera fund. I'll post some pics of my skis skimming through ankle deep snow.

January 4th, Days skied: 14

Old man winter pitches a tent!

Despite the stiff breeze, Crystal today was EPIC. I had to use the plastic shovel I bought at Target for $10 to dig out my car. 'nuff said.

Heavenly has gotten 3 feet of snow in the last 24 hours.

Mammoth Mountain got 7 feet.

January 3rd, Days skied: 13

It's All Greek To Me

On December 20th, 2005, Judge John E. Jones ruled that the Dover, PA school board acted in violation of the 1st amendment's establishment clause when it required that a statement be read to 9th grade biology students that deprecated Neo-Darwinism and put forth an alternative known as "Intelligent Design".

The 139 page ruling is logical and complete in every detail. While it may not be a binding precedent on other courts, I believe future rulings will have to give a nod of respect to Jones's well-formed arguments. Much of the testimony put forth by the plaintiff's expert witnesses was left completely unchallenged by the defence. The judge described what remained of the defence's case as "breathtaking inanity". The absolute bottom line of this trial is that the defence could only muster only a single scientist to testify on behalf of the school board, biochemist Micheal Behe (a man with no credentials in evolutionary biology) and he failed completely to phrase Intelligent Design in the language of science.

While many, including even Judge Jones, agree that Intelligent Design is an idea worthy of further examination, it's clear from the testimony that it is not an idea that exists in the language of science, where the verbs and nouns are the time-tested principles of peer review, predictability, reproducibility, objective measurements, etc; words markedly rare in Dr. Behe's testimony. Intelligent Design does not belong in a science class any more than Greek belongs in a French class. The idea that our 9th grade children should walk into a science class and be taught philosophy or theology or Greek is, to steal a phrase, breathtakingly inane.