Skiing is a great pleasure for me, but I'm growing weary of skiing by myself. For whatever reason, it has always been more pleasurable to ski with someone I know than to ski alone. Probably something about sharing the moment or having someone to talk to on the lifts.

My skiing life has been very unusual. I started, thanks to my dad, at the age of 3, for which I'm very thankful. I skied every year, at least one week a year until 1989, when there was a divergence between the cost of lift tickets and my finances. Between 1989 and when I moved to Vail eariler this year, I had skied exactly two days, one day in Turkey and one day in Bulgaria, both in 1999.

I had plenty of opportunities to ski when I lived in Bay Area. Friends were constantly going on weekend and day trips to Tahoe, but I never went. I could have gone on ski trips in the intervening years, but I always chose to travel overseas, usually to hot places instead. I did try to make a few trips overseas, but I had my plans quashed, once when my visa for Iran was denied and once when Clinton decided to bomb Iraq as a distraction from the Monica Lewinsky thing which made it difficult for me to go Lebanon as planned (I had visas for Lebanon and Syria).

Hopefully my brother will come out to Colorado soon and I have someone good to ski with for at least a week or so.