On Mortality and Privilege While Skiing in the Rockies

I learned to ski when I was 10. A family friend took me for the day to Vernon Valley/Great Gorge in New Jersey, and I learned the pizza wedge in an all-day lesson. A few years later, I started going on school trips, and eventually - this is where I really lucked out - to places like Utah, Vancouver, and Tahoe with my aunt. I've never been much of an athlete, but I picked up skiing quickly. By the end of my two years in LA, where the combination of no time commitments whatsoever and similarly self-scheduled friends in San Francisco and Vail meant multiple trips to Tahoe and the Rockies each season, I was pretty damn good. Since then, my skiing has been sporadic. What sport has more obstacles? It can be practiced only in certain, highly specific areas, requiring a serious cache of gear. It demands planning and cash.

Before I started my new job, I spent a few days Beaver Creek skiing with college buddies. It was awesome. I caught up with close friends I don't see often. Yaf, our host, has been skiing BC for years and pointed us toward all the best runs. We zoomed down the mountain and then chatted on the chairlift. It started with general catching up, but quickly turned to the fact that WE ARE GETTING OLD.

You guys. My knees. I used to be able to bomb down a mogul run, trusting that even if I was in terrible shape and possibly not skilled enough to navigate all the bumps, I could depend on fearlessness and a force of will to get down. Now I get winded halfway through, and plot out ways to unlock my screaming calves. I said the following phrase: "My knees!" - more than once. The post-ski hot tub morphed from fun drinking location to a physical necessity.

I was not alone in this.

The phrase "I'm so lucky" went through my head frequently as well. First, just to be there. To be someplace so beautiful and fun, with great friends. Also: to have access to a sport like this; that I'm able to buy a plane ticket and a three-day mountain pass without thinking too much about, is an incredible privilege. I actually have a lot more to say about that, but every time I try to phrase it I come out sounding like an asshole. Because writing a whole post about skiing a mountain whose actual, unironic slogan is "Beaver Creek: Not exactly roughing it" didn't do that already.

So to complete the picture, here's a photo of us chowing down on the warm chocolate chip cookies that staffers in chef hats and coats reading "Cookie Time!" pass out at the end of the day. Because if they weren't warm... that would probably be roughing it.

More Snow

More snow.  Yes.  It's all I'm writing about because it's all anyone can talk about.  

We got, I don't know, 8 more inches last night?  12?  65?  Who can tell anymore.  I just know that some cars are way more buried than others, and one guy came out and found this:

(That ice is six inches thick).

In our neck of the woods, things are much prettier.

Let's just keep it, just like this.

Assorted Mundane Photos

We had people over on Sunday, which means we had to clean up the apartment.  Revolutionary solution for our chronic messiness: guests.

It's been snowing off and on, mostly on, for the past few days.  Yesterday's flakes were large and fluffy and dissipated the moment they contacted earth (perfect snow); today's are wet and floppy and sticking like crazy (nightmare snow).  You could see the street when I woke up, but an hour later:

In a breakfast meeting on the 42nd floor, however - flakes fly upward.

We ate our bagels as newly minted snow globe residents, pretending not to notice.

As The Snow Days Continue

Just kidding - I don't work at a school.  Time to go back to work.  So as Bianca basked in the sunshine and Carla worshiped my forebears, I reluctantly picked out my cleanest jeans and some stupidly snow-inappropriate boots, and trudged into the street.

             

Obviously, the streets were unplowed.  The steps into the G were packed in ice, so I held onto the railing backwards with my ski gloves, slowly lowering myself into the station as I dug in my heels like crampons.  The man behind me grunted impatiently, as if I should have remembered my toboggan.

That same man and I were the only people going to work.

I had just missed the train, so I took some time to study the new subway ads.

Whoever Photoshopped Kevin James into a poreless wax figurine on The Dilemma posters should be fired.

I got to work late, but I didn't really care.  My boss, as it turns out, was still stuck on the runway at JFK... and would be for the next seven hours.

Thundersnow

You will learn two things from this post.  No, three.  One: how to work from home after a snowstorm.  Two: that I downloaded fX Camera for my Droid (or, that I got not-Hipstamatic for my not-iPhone).  Three: that after six years of having a phone with a camera, I have finally learned to get camera pictures off my phone.  Hoopla!

There was a blizzard last night.  One so intense, it was rumored that a thunderstorm was hiding within it.  Several feet of snow dumped down in the space of an hour.  It was depressing - I'd been set to see all my high school friends, but Mr. Weather was being a dick.  So Dan and I packed up our stuff and headed back to Brooklyn, instead.

The snow was so bad that we took the G, a train that ceases to run with any predictability after 9am, but is much closer to our apartment.  We watched snow drift in through the grate as we waited.  One man felt the need to stand under the flurries.  This went on for thirty minutes.

(this photo from a co-worker at her own similarly unprotected station)

Due to the stacks of snow and hideous winds, I'm working from home today.  Dan is on break from school, so we tried to go out and find a lunch special.

Who knew that most business owners in the neighborhood wouldn't risk their lives to remain open for the sake of serving a $6 lunch special?  We found an open diner, eventually.  Soup and grilled cheese: thundersnow food.

And now I'm back at home, my lunch break nearly over, chipping away at tasks I've been putting off all year.  Without my email pinging every minute, it's quite a bit easier to focus - what I figured for "working" from home seems to be just plain old working, only with sweatpants.  I'd like to try this more often.