Death By T-Bar

There are two types of fear a man can face in life: the fear of what he is about to do and the fear of what may happen. The former a man must work himself to enter into, the latter a man must work himself to escape from. But sometimes, in some situations, there is no predicting the future and there is no escape.

And so I found myself being dragged uphill by a small piece of plastic tucked behind my legs, tethered to a cable by a thin piece of bungee, not knowing if I would live or die. It turns out Rachel and I would survive, but only after one crash which thankfully spared the pair being dragged precariously uphill behind us. The "t-bar," as this ridiculous means of transportation is known, is supposed to bring you from the bottom of the slope to the top via a simple hook and pull mechanism whereby you hook a bar of plastic behind your legs and let it pull you forward praying in its stability. Most of the time it works, some of the time it does not, and all of the time you are given no warning as to whether or when the bar will gave way and you will be dispatched out onto the snow and into the path of other slowly dragging t-barers. The particularly unlucky are then honored with becoming human speed bumps which then result in the additional demise of those immediately behind them and so on and so forth until the dog pile of skiers and snowboarders manages to clear itself from the path or the whole pile reaches critical mass triggering an avalanche of snow and tangled bodies. Of course the best fails are the epic fails where a new skier first attempts the t-bar by sitting on the plastic wedge, something it is entirely not designed for, and so splays himself out onto the snow only 10 feet from the bottom station and lines of onlookers. I hate the t-bar, it is crap.

T-bar related anxieties aside, our most recent trip to Breckenridge, Colorado, was nice, and, as all trips with the Gravels are now required to be, full of Yorkies. We met up with some friends Adam and Kate, threw their kids down some hills on some sleds, had some crepes, and called it a week. I finally graduated to the bowls, and the one day we went was of course the one day with no visibility. The sky was white, the ground was white, the snow was white. I didn't know where I was or where I was going. We nevertheless jumped in and after a series of falls and a series of prolonged slides it turned out I was at the bottom. The trick, I found, is believing in yourself. And going very, very slowly.

There were also no casualties this time. No butt lacerations or face planting snow shoe misadventures. I did, however, lose my wallet on the very first day to my old nemesis, Frosty's Freeway. One spill and it was gone. I then got to spend the rest of the trip living on food stamps and Paul and Rachel's generosity. I will have my revenge, though, oh yes, I will have my revenge. I just need to figure out how.

Anyways, here's what snow looks like.

All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go

I have generally always felt that skiing and snowboarding were luxury items reserved for the landed elites when not otherwise engaging in polo, yachting, or a good fox hunt. Undoubtedly fun, but also undoubtedly expensive, and, as such, hard to defend in an already resource lopsided world. This was all before I smoked the crack pipe of winter mountain adventure, however, and now that I have I can more easily embrace self-indulgence. Skiing, it turns out, is not just fun, but very fun. Perhaps addictively so. I have and continue to rationalize my participation in such activities with the fact that costs have always been significantly reduced by free housing complements of Paul's family, but who am I kidding? I'm rich and I may as well not pretend otherwise.

The socioeconomics of skiing aside, my third and latest skiing trip the week before Christmas was notable for my final surmounting of the black diamond barrier. Last year I barely made it through blue-blacks -- bouncing my way down Frosty's Freeway on my back -- but this year I deftly descended a groomed black -- Cinarron was it? Cinnamon? -- with no problems. In my controlled chaos way of skiing at least. We also did two double blacks which sent me tumbling, but even when the tumble lasted the better part of a minute and involved several somersaults and an extended slide on my back it was a better experience than the accursed Frosty's Freeway. All my bravado aside, I cannot say I have ever felt a compelling need to constantly push myself to the limit with skiing, and so it was nice to ski joust and generally fool around on some greens and blues as well.

There was of course more to our trip than just skiing; we snowshoed as well! After paying heavy fees and acquiring the tacit approval of the mildly disgruntled majority we donned some shoes, Megan donned her ear flap cap, and we were off to see the waterfall. The waterfall never really materialized thanks to a thick blanket of snow, and Liz and Rachel had to turn back for sugar related issues -- it would seem Liz is a very stoic hypoglycemic --, and my snowman was a complete failure, but overall in the measure of most snowshoeing trips I'd say the trip was a success. Everyone had a good sweat at the very least.

And finally there was also much card playing. Specifically, the playing of Nertz. Normally card playing doesn't make for a very exciting subject to write about, but it is in this case because Drew and I were an unstoppable Nertz playing forced to be reckoned with. I imagine this was due more to Drew's prowess than my own, but I will nevertheless take equal credit for it. We rock. Undefeated. Booyah.

We also played some seemingly fabricated game involving player-selected famous persons -- or in our case mostly cartoon characters it seemed -- but as no one knew who El Cid was I don't want to talk about it. One fact I learned from the game, however, is that in some circles Xena: Warrior Princess was a show about lesbians. You decide!

Finally, finally, what truly set this ski trip apart from all the others -- aside from the lack of any in car brawls -- was our trip through northeastern New Mexico. More specifically it was the fact that we, or rather I, ran out of gas and our minivan puttered to a stop in the middle of nowhere just outside of Las Vegas, NM. In my defense I don't believe we passed a single gas station in the preceding hours before our unscheduled stop, but regardless an extra hour was added on to our trip in the acquisition of more fuel. We tried to get help from the local trailer home folk, but aside from a brief chat with a friendly Australian Sheepdog no help was to be found. This was probably for the best, however, as according to a cop Drew and Angie got a ride with the locals would have sooner sold us to coyotes than have sold us a gallon of gas. Oh wells, what're you gonna do?

My Photos

Rachel and Paul's Photos