Monday night we went out to dinner at a barbecue joint called Red Bull with an old windsurfing friend, Stan Beach, who winters in Utah and spends the windy season at the Columbia River Gorge. He competes in all kinds of ski races (giant slalom, downhill, you-name-it). He's part of the Park City Masters Ski Club, and just a few years ago he held a national ski race title. He travels where the wind blows or the snow goes, as it suits him. How does he manage to lead a life so free? Well, he's retired...65-years-old and in better shape than we are, no doubt about it. And so we call him Stan, but we also call him inspiration.
The caravan of Country Coach and Camper made it up to Solitude Mountain Resort in Big Cottonwood Canyon on Tuesday morning at 7:30. I was settled in to get some work done for a few days, but the Pedersens hit the mountain full force in overcast and flurry conditions and came back singing praises. The snow was great (though it took some getting used to) and the people were cool and the Creekside Restaurant was unbeatable. So we stayed until Thursday, weathering a storm which dumped eight inches of fresh pow on Wednesday and left a cloudless blue sky and a crowdless white hill for us to enjoy on Thursday. And you can bet that we were waiting at the gate before the lift lines even opened.
Solitude...Blue Sky, White Pow
SIDE NOTE: The lift procedure at Solitude was a new one to us...perhaps its standard fare at the Utah resorts, but it was as new as the dawn to us. Instead of the typical chaotic lines poorly monitored by lift ops, they've got little rotary gates, akin to those found at Disneyland, that each skier must go through to access the lift. The gate is opened by either inserting your magnetic-coded lift ticket into a slot, or by smothering the sensor box with abnormal affection. Translation: for a $5 deposit you can get a plastic card instead of a ticket, place the card somewhere on the upper left side of your body (that's in your sports bra for those of us without left-hand jacket pockets) and then the theory is that as you slide up to the gate, the sensor reads the card through your multiple layers of clothes and opens the gate for you. Well, the theory basically works, but it seemed to work a lot better if you slammed your body against the blue sensor plate and hugged the briefcase-sized mechanism like it was going off to war.
U of U Campground
Thursday night we headed down the hill into Salt Lake City proper, because by some strange coincidence, the Fresno State Bulldogs had made it into the NCAA championship playoffs and were playing at U of U. Well, three of our four-pronged crowd had hometown pride and we took our cheering voices and red streamers to the Huntsman Center to lend some support to the Dogs. Sent on a mission to find better seats at the onset of the game, Brant was almost immediately absent from our cheering section. He claims that he spent each time-out waving and throwing hand signals up at us, but we spent each time-out playing Where's Waldo with the binoculars...only BP wasn't wearing a red-and-white-striped shirt, but rather a white T-shirt and black cap just like a thousand other people. Regardless, his abscense from the unit was probably why the Bulldogs lost. Enough said.
We funneled out of the stadium at half past freeze your ass off and walked back to the rigs. We bid BP's parents farewell. They pulled out of the parking lot and only had to stop three times for last-minute returns. They set off on the long journey home, via Las Vegas....and who knows what that could mean.
