Vail Archive

One of the unfortunate side effects of skiing at places like Vail and Beaver Creek is people like this:

We arrived at the Eagle/Vail airport just before them and watched as ten of them decamped from two vehciles, one for them and one for their luggage. There were 18 pieces, many the same sickly pink color as the bismuth I had bought for my lower GI issues apres Mexican food in Edwards. You can see the color better here.

Amongst these bags were not a single ski bag. Not one. What the fuck were these people doing here, clogging up our infrastructure with their damnable fur-covered bodies if they weren't even skiing? By the way, I love the look of absolute horror on the face of the young girl in the middle of the frame. She of the waist length fur. She'll probably graduate to full length when she hits 18.

So, I managed to get through a week of flinging myself around Vail and Beaver Creek with nary a scratch. I skied hard and i skied fast and I had tons of fun. I almost got away unscathed, but on get away day (a day we didn't even ski), I almost managed to destroy myself.

We were playing around and taking photos on the pirate ship that sits at the base of Vail Village. The deck of the ship is covered with snow and it's super slick, but I got it in my head anyway that I was going to take the slide that escapes from the bow and I managed to slip off the side of the ship where the webbing leads up to the deck. Fuck that hurt. I jammed my left thumb trying to keep myself from going ass over tea-kettle, which I did, but I scraped the shit out of my left calf along the gunwhale, or what there was of one.

I felt like a fool. It's a good thing very few people were around to see it.

Like none other

Here's Russ jamming down a virgin powder slope in Vail's Legendary Back Bowls(TM). This is probably on Ricky's Ridge in Sundown Bowl right behind Game Creek. Sometime it's hard to tell exactly where you are in the Back Bowls--they are so wide open. This the was out first visit to the Back Bowls on this trip (other than several visits to Blue Sky Basin. The sun was shinning. The was 6-8 inches of fresh powder on the ground. It was about as close to perfect as you could hope for.

in 2004, I worked at Vail Lionshead Sharpshooters for about 4 months. Since then, Lionshead has gotten a massive facelift. It really needed to updated. The village was built in the 60s and looked it. I was just worried that my favorite restaurants in Vail, DJ's and Les Delices de France (aka The French Deli) wouldn't survive the facelift. DJ's sadly seems to be MIA, but the French Deli is alive and kicking.

It was good to see Daniel Bouvier, the curmudgeonly yet pleasantly gregarious proprietor, working behind the counter. He used to give all Sharpshooters a generous discount, so I was a regular. I told him how glad I was see that the Deli was still around and that I had been fantasizing about his pate sandwiches.

He said that business couldn't be better. The construction at Lionshead was way behind schedule and he's been feeding all the workers. He hoped that it would take another two years the finish the work. I wished him good luck, then devoured my scrumptious pate sandwich.

I'm leaving Colorado this morning. Details to come.

39 FUCKING DEGREES!!!!! Better them than me.

More pictures to come. I promise.

UPDATE (29DEC05): Finally, the pictures are online. OK, they've been online for a long time. I'm just getting around to updating this post now through. Hope you like them.

With only two days left in the Vail ski season, it's time to assess this little Colorado adventure.

Can you caption this photo? The winner gets a year supply of pisupo* and the undying admiration of your peers.

*since no one should eat pisupo, a year's supply consititues zero cans

After a winter snap that brought 2 feet of new snow over four days last week, spring has come back to wreak havoc on the bottom part of the mountian again. This shot of lower "Bwana" is from the base of Lionshead looking up along the route of the gondola. This run has been closed for more than a week, but it had been looking somewhat winter-like, but is now postively a disaster. It looks like some giant has been wiping his ass on the lower half of the mountain. It's really disgusting.

On the positive side, the snow just a few hundred yards up the mountain is brilliant. And there's nothing finer that skiing on perfect snow when it's 50 degrees with blue skies and few puffy clouds. I spent most of the day skiing Blue Sky Basin wearing one of my "Samoan" shirts. Damn fun.

We woke up this morning to a beautiful sight. 9 inches of snow had fallen in Avon (the first snow since I arrived towards the end of March). The previously springlike trailer park was blanketed with lovely, fresh snow. This is a view out of my bedroom window at dawn.

My brother Brian arrived from DC last night. He was a little jet lagged so we didn't do much. We drove into Vail Village and had a beer at the Tap Room, but it was raining (sigh) and it was a Monday, so there weren't too many people around. We tried to go for a walk and do some window shopping, but there was too much rain.

Brian is staying in Vail for five days. Hopefully we'll ski every day and get in at least one day at Beaver Creek.

Last night a group of us from the store went to eat sushi at Sato's in Edwards, the neighboring town to Avon. There was some sort of ocassion, but it was really an excuse to socialize outside our "normal" realm. We ordered a ton of sushi. When our order came, it was presented on this massive wooden boat that took uo the entire table. There was hamchi sashimi, unagi, quail eggs, tons and tons of rolls and a few large bottles of saki. The 7 of us plowed through the sushi. We ordered desert, green tea ice cream (for me), brownie a la mode, and tempura ice cream.

Before the bill came, Kurt, my unpredicatable manager, dared Lucy, our 18 year old Braziliian photographer to eat this leaf that the sushi was presented on. But not just the leaf. He rolled it up and stuffed it with wasabi and rolled it in sweet unagi sauce. If she could eat it, Kurt would pick up the tab. Lucy was game. She put the finger roll in her mouth, started chewing but right when it looked like she was going to get the thing down, she gagged, spit it up, starting tearing and we all busted up laughing. It was hillarious.

The bill comes and Kurt says if we just pitch in 20 bucks, he'll pick up the rest. Very cool. Except his debit card is denied. He says he used it before earlier in the day and this tab (360 buck with tip) put him over his limit. He tried to call his bank but he couldn't get through, so guess what happened? Guess who offered to pick up the bill. That's right. It actually cost me 380 bucks because I had given Kurt 20 bucks before and never got it back. Now if he doesn't pay me back in two days, I will feel totally justified in taking the cash out of the til. What an idiot.

Why am I psyched, you ask? Well, I'm psyched because my twin brother is coming out to Vail tomorrow night for a few days of skiing. It's hard to beleive but we haven't skied together in more than 15 years. 15 years! That seems incredible to me.

For most of our lives Brian has been a much better skier than me. Even when we were three, he advanced faster than I did. He was on "real" skis when we were 3 or 4 while I was still on plastic, yellow "banana" skis. Every year we would make at least one trip to Mammoth or Tahoe or Utah and it was obvious that Brian could dust me. Then in 1989, for various reasons, I pretty much stopped skiing. Brian kept going on trips, improving his skiing, while my skills deteriorated badly. But that's all ancient history.

I've skied just about everyday for the last 10 weeks and I don't know the last time Brian hit the slopes. I also have new skis that rip (Salomon Pocket Rockets) while he has equipment that probably belongs in a museum. I'd be surprised if he was still better than me, but we'll see when he gets here. I don't really care. It will just be nice to have someone to ski with, especailly someone who can keep up with me, especailly my twin brother. And if we get some new snow, that will be a huge bonus.

Almost as depressing as watching the snow on the mountain deteriorate over the last few weeks is the sound of a massive downpour outside. Rain is just about the most detrimental thing that can happen to an already troubled ski mountain. The worst part is that forecast has been calling for snow for the past few days and we might have a milimeter.

The snow on the top of the mountain is still decent, but on the bottom, it's a mess. Some runs are closed because the coverage is disgustingly poor. The snow has the consistency of corn meal and when the mercury drops below freezing overnight, it forms this nasty crud that is really unpleasant to ski.

The mountain is supposed to stay open until the 18th of April, and it will stay open despite the condition of the mountain. Some snow will help and if you believe the forecast on weather.com (zip code 81657) we're going to get dumped on, but the forecasts have been wrong, so we'll just have to see.

Pray for snow.

That's the cheapest price you'll find for regular unleaded gasoline anywhere in the Vail valley. I wouldn't have even noticed it before when I lived in West Vail, took the bus to work and maybe used my car one day a week. But now I live in Avon and I drive almost everyday. My Subaru gets decent mileage, but at 2+ bucks a gallon, it's hard to justify all the driving I have to do.

And now OPEC has agreed to squeeze production. Whether or not they actually manage it is another story, but you can bet that the opportunistic US petroleum companies are going to take this opportunity to gouge us even further. Thank you Exxon, Chevron & Texaco.

So what the hell is really going on? Don't we now own a huge ga station in the Middle East? Don't anyone out there tell me that we invaded Iraq for national security or humanitarian reasons. So we own oil production in Iraq which is now producting more barrels per day than it was was before the invasion and yet gas prices are at a record high. It's insane.

The sun is shining, the snow is perfect and I have my lazy ass out of bed and at the base of lionshead 10 minutes before the lifts open. I just need to put my contacts in, my boots on and I'm out of here for a huge day of skiing all over the place amongst Vail's 5000+ skiable acres.

The plan is stay on the front side in the morning while the crowds are thin (the crowds will be thin all day, who am I kidding?) and have some pictures taken by my poor colleagues who have to work this fine day. Then I'm going to head over to the backside and to my favorite spot Blue Sky Basin where I'm going to have a picnic (I brought stuff to bbq on the complementary outdoor self-serve barbeques up at the top at Belle's Camp).

If my knees hold out, and I have a bottle of Ibuprofun that says they will, this should be the best day of the year. The only thing that could make it better would be to have someone to share it with. Too bad the kittens don't ski.

Hope you're having fun wherever you are.

If you said "zero", you'd be correct. It was a first, and hopefully a last. It's hard to make money when you're on commission and you don't snap a single frame. So what happened? I finally decided to leave the store and head up to the mountain before 10AM. I got to the top of the run I was , Lost Boy (more like Lost Cause) and I stopped next to this women who, feeling the snow blasting into her face, said something like, this is ridiculous. I said, you want to hear ridiculous?, I'm supposed to be down there taking pictures of skiers. She just smiled. You couldn't see halfway down the slope, about 15 meters.

Instead of working, I did what any sane red-blooded skier would do when it's dumping snow, I skied. I went all over the front side of the mountain. I dipped for one run down The Slot into the backside, but the visibility was so poor, the wind so fierce, and the snow dump so hard that I needed to get the hell out of there.

I brought lunch with me (roast beef and turkey rolled in a tortilla) but I needed something warm so I stopped at Two Elks Lodge on far eastern side of the mountain and had a plate of chili fries. These are not just any chili fries. For one thing they cost 5 bucks, but none of the food on the mountain is cheap. And then the chili wasn't your average, ordinary out of the can variety, this was homemade buffalo chili. Yum.

I made my was slowly back to the west side of the mountain where I work. Now, amazingly the sun out, the sky is blue and clouds are puffy white and I wish I was still out there ripping it up instead of sitting in the Vail library informing you about my day.

Hopefully I won't have to cool my heels in the store until 7, seeing as how I didn't take any pictures today, so I would surprised if I had any customers.

You don't have to take my word for anything I say about Vail, whether it's the weather or the stunning views. You can look at the multiple webcams around the mountain here:

http://web.vail.net/local/livecams.cfm

When I woke up this morning, there was a solid two inches of snow on my windshield. The roads were icy and nasty. The snow continues to fall on the mountain here in Vail. We probably got about 5 inches last night from a slow but steady dump. The mountain desparately needed the snow, but it makes for horrible working conditions and I have exactly zero motivation right now which is why I'm writing this instead of getting ready to go into my zone to shoot skiers I can barely see through a thick veil of snow.

I don't even feel like skiing this morning. All I want to do is get back into bed and curl up with Fil and Mak, who is routinely getting me up at 4:30 in the morning so I can let him out. When he used to wake me up at 6:30, that was tolerable because I had to get up soon anyway, but this 430 shit has got to stop. Only I don't know what to do. The little shithead continues to ignore my most ardent pleas for sleep continuity.

I don't want to write too much about my new digs now. Soak it up. Bask in it's white trash glory. Get an eyeful and try to imagine living with a guy who keeps a cool 30 pack of bud cans in the fridge and a season's worth of frozen elk, duck and god knows what else in the freezer. Many stories to come. I promise.

It rained a little again last night and then snowed all day today. It was beautiful but a serious bitch to work in. I took about 600 shots in the blizzard and sold exactly none of them. If it weren't for a few kind souls who braved the weather and bought a few pics from days past, the day would have been a complete wash.

That said, we desparately needed the snow. The bottom of the mountain was looking like someone has a taken a massive shit and smeared it all over the place. I have some nice new gauges in the bottoms of my new skis from running over exposed rocks. The snow has been the texture of corn meal and the consisteny of a slurpee. It's nasty. It's great to ski when it's 40 plus degrees outside, but not if the snow is a complete disaster.

So now that will change, at least until the mercury rises again. Snow was still falling when I left Vail. Hopefully it will storm on th mountain all night and we can have a few nice days of skiing before the next front arrives, if the next front arirves.

It rained here in Vail last night. That is not a good thing. In fact, quite the opposite, it's a disaster. The season is supposed to go for another month, but already it's rain. Why is rain bad? Number one is that it's not snow. We need snow. You ski on snow. You can't ski on rain. Rain also wreaks havoc with poor coverage areas, creating mud, turning the remaining good snow into a chocolate brown mess. Rain alo freezes when it comes into contact with the snow turning an already poor surface into a sheet of ice that the New York Rangers would be happy with, but mot skiers in the world loathe.

The worst part about it was that the forecast had called for snow. Everyone as expecting some snow. We got rain. Oh, well. The mountain isn't going to close because rooms are booked and restaurant tables are reserved, but unless we get a significant dump of snow soon, the next month is going to be decidedly unpleasant.

Last weekend, the "celebrities" were town for some race event called the American Ski Classic. Only the celebrities were of a lower grade this season for some reason. There were ski legends like Billy Kidd and Klaus Obermeyer (pictured right), but no real stars of note unless you count Bobby Kennedy, jr. For whatever reason, the Classic is off the celebrity map this year.

Saying that, it was very cool to see Klaus Obermeyer ski. Mr. Obermeyer is a skiing pioneer (see the box below). I saw him and a few of his racing colleagues on Saturday morning when I played hooky from work to catch 45 minutes or so of the races at Golden Peak. I was right on the course taking picture. It was amazing to be that close to skiers going that fast. Some of the better racers, the ones ripping through all the gates, were skiing by so fast they would litterally blow by me. Mr. Obermeyer, being in 80s, didn't blow by anybody but he was still impressive and an inspiration to everyone in attendance. I'd like to be able to walk without assistance when I'm 80 not to mention strapping on a pair of skiis and be able to hold my own in a handicap race.

Bavarian born Klaus Obermeyer started skiing on homemade runners, made from a wooden citrus crate at age three. He became an engineer in automobile and aircraft manufacturing but escaped Nazi Germany in 1947 and came to America. He arrived in Aspen, via Sun Valley and through various travels with movie mogul Warren Miller, where he initially taught skiing for $10 per day for Friedl Pfeifer.

He soon discovered his students were uncomfortable with the quality of their clothing, sun glasses and lack of sunscreen, and quickly developed ski products such as the down parka and a line of revolutionary ski clothing that has remained at the top of the market for the past 50 years. His passion for quality and public relations has resulted in a multi-million dollar company, still under his leadership at 77 years of age.

He was awarded the distinguished Halva International Skiing Award in 1996 for his outstanding contribution to skiing.

from Colorado Ski Museum - Ski Hall of Fame

I heard on the radio today that Gov. Owens signed a bill into law that will make it illegal to drive slowly in the fast lane. Finally there's something sensible coming out of this facakta state.

I don't know why, but I take at least one shot of every Ski Patrol that comes by with a sled. Maybe it's some reminder of my own inevitable accident. I don't know.

I had never sold one until this week when this led with two little kids came by with the father right in the rear. He asked me the roll number as he skied by and came in the shop a few days later and bought 3 copies of the photo.

His son was alright. He just fell and thought he might have broken a rib, but only had a bad bruise.

The other day, a kid came into the shop with his mom in the morning while I was uploading some images and his mom convinced him that he needed a 24x20 poster of this picture I shot of him earlier that day. It's not even a particularly good picture. It's just one of a 500-1000 shots I take every day that look alright and happen to be in focus.

On the one hand I was thrilled because the poster costs 85 bucks and would net me about 15 dollars for very little work. On the other hand, it was a firm reminder to me about how wierd this job is.

I have this vision in my mind of people who buy photos I have taken. They take them home or to their office. They frame them. They stick them up on the mantle or the wall or on the credenza with the hope, I suppose, that someone will admire their form or their outfit or the fact that they ski at Vail or whatever. Then that admirer will say, nice picture, who took it? And the guy will answer, oh, I don't know, some guy.

Some guy. That's me.

There is a fresh blanket of snow covering the Vail Valley. Where there was mud and grass, there's now snow. Sidewalks and streets are icy and dangerous again. Critters have gone back to hibernation.

I woke this morning to little flurries and about 3 inches of snow which I had to scrape off my car. It's not a lot, but it's a start. You could see the storm coming last night. I was shooting portraits up at the top of the gondola and it was so cold that people were lining up to take the gondola down instead of ski.

Hopefully some of the bald spots on the mountain will be covered up and the sheets of nasty ice powdered over. The sun is out now and the little storm is passing, but there should be some more snow in the days to follow. We need it if the season is going to last until the 3rd week of April.

My efforts to find a new place have yielded little fruit. It's hard enough to find a reasonably priced place let alone one that allows pets, is furnished and doesn't want a lease more than 6 months. The one place I found is in a trailer park in Avon, one of the neighboring towns to Vail. So, since I don't want to lose my job, I'm moving in on Tuesday, unless there's some act of god that allows me to find a decent place before then (extremely unlikely).

At least Avon is nice place. It's the town that supports Beaver Creek Ski Resort, which is far more exclusive than Vail. It's also convenient for me. My bank is there. Avon is something like a ten minute drive up the valley so I'll have to drive to work instead of taking the bus, but I can deal with it because I found a place close by that I can park for free. It's also starting to stay light after 7 o'clock so I won't have to drive home in the dark which is a nightmare on the cruvy, icy I-70.

So in three days, I'll officially join the ranks of trailer trash. It should be interesting at least in the short term. Stay tuned for details.

Not only have we seen no snow for a week, it's been over 50 degrees Farenheit everyday since Sunday. Winter is over and spring is definately here. So what does this mean?

Pine cones are starting to form on the evergreens which are looking more redish brown everyday. Squirrels can be seen running from tree to tree. The snow is disappearing rapidly. The coverage is horrible in places. It looks like the mountain is coming apart in the places where the weeds and the mud can been in patches. The snow melts in the afternoon and turns to slush and freezes into slick sheets overnight. It makes for challenging ski conditions but my tan looks great.

The forecast is for more hot weather for the next few days, but it's supposed to snow again on my days off, Tuesday and Wendesday. We definitely need it.

Last night, I was home sitting on the couch watching the tube when Roy comes upstairs and asks me the seemingly innocuous question, "So how long are you planning to stay in Vail?"

I'm thinking, what the fuck is going on here? I tell him that I don't know. It depends on a bunch of things that need to be sorted out. He says, I have to move out on the 20th (when the next rent check is due). I ask him why. Is there anything that I've done? He says no, but things are really bad between him and Lilla and I'm not making it any easier being around. I said, are you evicting me? He said, well you don't have a lease or a rental agreement and if you want me to make ugly I can. And I believe him.

The thing is, Roy is the kind of guy who makes everything in his life ugly. Now I know that all I have is a verbal agreement that I would rent the room until the end of the ski season which is something like April 20th. I'm sure I have rights based on that agreement. I'm also sure that his wife Lilla will back me up. She wasn't too happy when I told her the news. However, I don't want to continue living in that house with it's toxic and highly uncomfortable atmosphere.

So where does that leave me? I might have to quit my job and leave town because it's very hard if not impossible to find a place this late in the season let alone someone who will let me move in with two kittens. If I am forced to leave, what should I do? Should I take legal action or should I just move on and let it go and get on with my life? Being forced to leave is going to cost me a lot of money in lost comissions.

I don't know. All I know is that I'm really pissed off.

I don't think it ever stopped snowing last night. The flurries tailed off to a trickle of tiny flakes, but it just kept on coming down. Now it's dumping again which means a another rough day for photography but a great day for skiing.

I woke up this morning to a world of white. The snow is coming down in massive dumps and the whole valley is blanketed with white stuff. This means a few things. One is that portrait photographers are going to have a misserable day. No one wants to sit for a portrait when it's bucketing snow. Two Vail is getting a massive infusion of snow right when it needs it. We've had some very warm afternoons, turning the snow to mush and leaving puddles all over town. A nice dump of 1-2 feet will rejuvenate the place. Three. I'm going to freeze my ass trying to take action photos of people over on Lost Boy. Maybe people will buy. Maybe they won't. It's tough to say. Four, the kittens are housebound. There's no way I'm going to let them fall into a snow drift.

The other night, on a whim, I drove 45 minutes or so to do something that I've wanted to do as long as I can remember, ski at night. Night skiing has been around for a long time. I can recall Park City installing lights when I was a kid and there was at least one local place in Southern California that had lights, but for some reason I never went, until last Wednesday.

As far as I know, Keystone is the only ski resort in Colorado with lights. It's definitely the only place within driving distance. The session runs from 6 to 8. I left Vail at about 5:15 thinking I had an hour drive ahead of me, but I cruised down there in about 45 minutes, got my gear together and hit the mountain.

I didn't know If I was going to be able to ski at Keystone. My ski pass is only good for Vail and Beaver Creek, but the little credit card like thing with a bar code looks like same pass that's good for Keystone. I didn't want to pay the 39 bucks for 2 hours of skiing.

So I went to the gondola. They scanned my pass and the got a message that said "Resort Charge" which means there's a problem with the credit card I have associated with the pass. The funny thing is, I don't have a credit card associated with the pass.

The lift operator said he'd let me up, but I had to ski down and take care of the problem. Instead I skied down to the other running lift, the Peru Express, where they weren't checking passes a skied it until 8.

I was expecting the slopes to be icy, because it had been a warm afternoon, but it wasn't too bad and there weren't many skiers around so I felt like I had the mountain to myself. It was probably in the high 20s with no clouds in the sky at all, just tons of stars and a sliver of a crescent moon.

I don't know if I'm going to rush back to do it again, mostly because the drive back west on I-70 is horrifying at night, but it was fun thing to do a whim and nice to know that it's there if I need it.

Lilla and Roy have put the house on the market. The asking price is 380,000 furnished. I have no idea if this is a good deal or not. I'm hoping it's not going to sell, because I don't want to deal with finding a new place, despite the toxic atmosphere here.

Lilla is pushing hard for me to buy the place. I don't even know if I would if I could afford it, which is debatable. The place is nice, there's no doubt about that and the location is excellent. I could probably rent it for a few months during the ski season and pay the mortgage. The cheapest, grottiest hotels around here go for 300 bucks a night, so I suppose I could 2 grand a week for this joint. I do want to get into real estate speculation and this FSBO could be my entree.

Lilla has given me the card of her mortgage broker, a guy by the name of Jack Bergey. She seems to be of the opinion that Jack can work some magic and make it happen. I'm skeptical, especially since the my job is not only 100% commission, but is ending in April when the mountain shuts down.

Also, if I'm going to buy a place, I really want a duplex or a lock off so that I can live in one unit and rent out the other. That makes more sense, right? Plus, do I really want to put down roots in Colorado? This is a fucked up state.

Ok. So some people really enjoy skiing and snowboarding. Who can blame them? Skiing is damn fun. But rarely are people as outwardly expressive of their enjoyment as this woman who came by yesterday.

Her boyfriend came in and bought a 8x10 for her.

Sometimes you see some odd things on the slopes at Vail. Sometimes those odd things inlcude a 6 foot rodent on a snowboard.

Last Friday I was shooting on Lost Boy, which is furthest we ever shoot from our store. The run is the furthest east on the entire mountain, but it's a good place to shoot because on a clear day, you have a great view of the spectacular Holy Cross Mountain.

I was out on the slopes early, about 9:30 because it was a beautiful day. After about 3 memory cards, I was getting a error message and realized the battery was dead. Then when I put in my spare, I found out it was dead too. I was pissed because it was going to take me at least an hour to get back down to Lionshead where the store is, pick up some new batteries, and get back. I was going miss a prime earning hour on a great day, but I had no choice. I put on my skis and headed down to Chair 7, and then skied all the way back down to the village.

While I was in the store, someone called and said they wanted to do private shoot. Cecilia, who took the call, asked me if I wanted to do it. I said what the hell. I grabbed my gear and went up to Mid-Vail to meet this guy Dalton.

I was worried he a) wasn't going to show up or b) wasn't going to be able to find me, but we found each other and we headed straight up into the Vail's famous Back Bowls. The Back Bowls have been skied by locals for years but were only recently made accessible to the general public with the addition of few lifts to ferry skiers out of the steep and bumpy terrain back there.

Born Free is one of the runs on the Lionshead side of Vail that I usually shoot. This guy came flying by as I was setting up my signs in the morning. He, like many riders on this section of Born Free, completely ignored the two giant yellow "SLOW" signs that are set up on this part of the run by the Vail Ski Patrol and went flying off the little lip at the top.

I woke up Wednesday morning to massive snowflakes and world of pure whiteness outside my bedroom window. It was a day off, and I would have loved to sleep in, but the kittens simply won't allow me to sleep past 7 o'clock, which is great on workdays, because I will never be late for work, but on the "weekends", it sort of sucks.

Yesterday I was heading up the Eagle Bahn Gondola in Lionshead for the last run of the day at about 3:50. There were two other guys in the gondola. This one guy, maybe about 60, wearing a read and white jumpsuit with stars all over it, green North Face hat under a yellow helmet, full head of gray hair, square jaw, looked like a combination of a doctor and Evil Knievel. He was telling the other guy a story that started with the mention of some medical thing called Glycol which I didn't really hear because I wasn't paying much attention to them until he said that when he was in college he fell off a third story balcony and broke his back, then he was rock climbing in Wyoming and the rope broke and he fell into boulder field and broke his back, then he was driving a car across Canada and some dude who stole a blue car in Ottawa fell asleep at the wheel and hit him head on, the other guy was killed, he but his chin and didn't his back a bit a good, the he was skiing in Aspen and somehow slid down the side of the mountain something like 800 feet and broke his back again. I'm thinking I need to get the fuck out of this gondola, but fortunately nothing happened.

Last night I was waiting for the West Vail Red bus to whisk me home, when the radio crackled and the bus driver on the other end was saying how one of his passengers had passed out and he wanted to know what to do. This was a little after 6 o'clock. 6 o'clock!!@! Apres Ski starts (and sometimes finishes) early at Vail.

Last night I was driving home from a dinner party at my manager's place up in the hills above Beaver Creek in a place called Wildridge when I looked in my rear view window to see those oh so familiar flashing red and blue lights. Well, not that familiar because I can't remember being pulled over in the last ten years or so, but you know what I mean.

I pull over immediately to the shoulder. The cop, one Sgt. McGovern, walks up and when I roll down the window I get the standard, license, insurance and registration. All of which, fortunately, I have. That hasn't always been the case.

I had three Negra Modelos at the party but I had waited almost 2 hours before hitting the road and wasn't drunk at all, but that didn't mean I wasn't nervous. My eyes have been really red lately becasue I started wearing contacts all day for the first time in at least 5 years, and I haven't been getting much sleep (I blame the altitude and the kittens). And getting pulled over at any time for any reason is unsettling.

Sgt. McGovern tells me that he pulled me over because I was going a little quick coming down the hill. In fact I misjudged one of the curves and almost flew off the side of the mountain. I agreed with him and said that I just moved into the area and didn't know the streets very well, but I slowed immediately when I realized I was going to fast for the road. Then he went back to his car, presumably to run my DL.

Thankfully, I don't have any points nor any outstanding warrants, so when he came back about five minutes later he let me go with a warning to watch my speed. Thanks, officer.

Sprint runs a communications center at the top of the Eagle Bahn gondola where I am now trying to thaw out my little toes. Internet connection is super fast and, best of all, it's free. So you can expect daily reports from the top of the mountain.

The weather is complete crap today. It's about 20 degrees and there is no visibility. It's not exactly the kind of day that screams, "group portrait". So instead of taking pictures (and making money) I've spent most of the moring skiing and getting to know the mountain, which is massive.

It's great skiing on a day like this because even though it's cold, windy and snowy, the trails are full of powder. The problem for me is that I'm in horrible skiing shape which basically means that one run down the mountain releases enough lactic acid in my thighs to make me want quit and head home. I'll be in shape in a few days, but meanwhile my skiis are chattering all over the place. It could be worse. I could be where you are. :)

Since I arrived on Tuesday, the weather in Vail has been nothing short of amazing. It's been sunny and warm every day, getting up to about 40 degrees at the top on the Gondola. I've picked up more of a tan in the last few days than I did in a year of living in the tropics.

Vail hasn't seen much snow in the last two weeks yet the slopes are still great with hardly any icy patches. The resort does a great job of keeping the mountain groomed for perfect skiing conditions. That said, the valley could really use what the locals call "a dump".

Today, the snow is supposed to start falling again and should continue in flurries all week long, which should make for great skiing. Hopefully I won't freeze my tuchus off.

***UPDATE*** It's now 7:33am (mountain time). The day is starting here in Vail and as I look outside my window I can see massive flakes of snow drifting silently to the ground. It's beautiful. Yet somehow the thought of standing outside at the top of the mountain isn't nearly as appealing a prospect as it was yesterday.