Big World
Last weekend's family ski trip up to Whistler started on a very bad note. As soon as we started unloading our bags from the truck I made a rather shocking revelation: "Hey...where's my boot bag?" Yes, that's right. I forgot to take my ski boots, as well as about half of my gear, on a ski vacation. I think Alanis Morrisette has a song along these lines. Nothing that a quick (yet annoyingly expensive) trip to the rental place couldn't fix, though.
Once my gear was straightened out, I enjoyed three days of wonderful skiing on some of the best terrain in North America. It's mindboggling just how much bigger Whistler is than my usual haunt, Mt. Hood Meadows. At Meadows, lift rides take about 5 minutes and you can ski from the top of the mountain down to the base in 10 minutes if you take your time. At Whistler, the lifts are easily twice as long and skiing down to the village from the top will take you more than half an hour. And then there's a whole other mountain that's just as big. Craziness. The only catch our entire time there was the weather - it was kinda hit or miss. Day one was overcast with really hard, choppy snow, day two was blizzard conditions the whole day, and day three was absolutely gorgeous, with clear skies and nearly a foot of fresh powder. Unfortunately, by the time day three rolled around I was so wiped out I couldn't really go all out on the black diamonds.
Despite being tired, day three had some charms of it's own. In particular, an enthusiastic fellow that we rode the lift with named Eric.
Eric the Healer.
No, I'm not shitting you, that is actually what he called himself.
Our acquaintance started innocently enough. Dad and he were using similar skis, so they geeked out for a while about those. Eric the Healer seemed like a perfectly normal, nice enough guy. Sure, he had naked cartoons stickered to the tops of his skis, but hey, guys dig the naked ladies, no? The conversation died out, so we settled in to wait out the rest of the lift ride in silence. Eric the Healer, however, had other plans.
Out of nowhere he launches into a tirade against the evils of sodium fluoride. According to Eric the Healer, it's an insidious compound derived from rat poison that will alter your mind and change your behavior if it doesn't outright kill you (it's toxic, yes, but only in gram amounts - it's commonly used in small amounts to fluoridate drinking water). So we thought, okay, Eric the Healer's just an activist in need of a more worthy cause, no cause for alarm.
Next thing we know he steers his monologue onto the topic of depleted uranium. A valid enough concern, sure - it's toxic, it's persistent in the environment, and it tends to get fired out guns at people. Not the friendliest stuff on earth. But to Eric the Healer, it was a manifestation of the evil inherent in our government: the intentional, willful, malicious poisoning of the Iraqi people with the toxic leftovers of our nuclear weapons program. Apparently, the government had even gone to such great lengths as having him followed and tapping his phone. So...a just enough cause, but wow, can you say "paranoid?"
Then he says something that makes everything he's uttered in the last few minutes seem totally rational: "Now, I don't want to weird you guys out and get into the politics behind all this, so I won't. But don't get me started about the aliens." Unfortunately, Eric the Healer seemed to have the wondrous ability to start and maintain entire conversations by himself, so our dumbstruck silence was moot. Eric the Healer got started about the aliens.
Apparently there's good aliens and bad aliens. There's the grey aliens, who are good aliens, and actually aren't grey (it's just their spacesuit!). Then there's the bad aliens - the lizard people who are working with our government towards all sorts of nefarious ends.
By this time, we were reaching the end of the lift, so as we parted Eric the Healer told us to look for the book he was writing and the movie that would inevitably be based on it. Oh, I'll be looking for it, alright.
Godspeed, you crazy bastard. And make sure to drink only rainwater and grain alcohol, or the reptile-alien controlled government will get you with that evil fluoridation.
Once my gear was straightened out, I enjoyed three days of wonderful skiing on some of the best terrain in North America. It's mindboggling just how much bigger Whistler is than my usual haunt, Mt. Hood Meadows. At Meadows, lift rides take about 5 minutes and you can ski from the top of the mountain down to the base in 10 minutes if you take your time. At Whistler, the lifts are easily twice as long and skiing down to the village from the top will take you more than half an hour. And then there's a whole other mountain that's just as big. Craziness. The only catch our entire time there was the weather - it was kinda hit or miss. Day one was overcast with really hard, choppy snow, day two was blizzard conditions the whole day, and day three was absolutely gorgeous, with clear skies and nearly a foot of fresh powder. Unfortunately, by the time day three rolled around I was so wiped out I couldn't really go all out on the black diamonds.
Despite being tired, day three had some charms of it's own. In particular, an enthusiastic fellow that we rode the lift with named Eric.
Eric the Healer.
No, I'm not shitting you, that is actually what he called himself.
Our acquaintance started innocently enough. Dad and he were using similar skis, so they geeked out for a while about those. Eric the Healer seemed like a perfectly normal, nice enough guy. Sure, he had naked cartoons stickered to the tops of his skis, but hey, guys dig the naked ladies, no? The conversation died out, so we settled in to wait out the rest of the lift ride in silence. Eric the Healer, however, had other plans.
Out of nowhere he launches into a tirade against the evils of sodium fluoride. According to Eric the Healer, it's an insidious compound derived from rat poison that will alter your mind and change your behavior if it doesn't outright kill you (it's toxic, yes, but only in gram amounts - it's commonly used in small amounts to fluoridate drinking water). So we thought, okay, Eric the Healer's just an activist in need of a more worthy cause, no cause for alarm.
Next thing we know he steers his monologue onto the topic of depleted uranium. A valid enough concern, sure - it's toxic, it's persistent in the environment, and it tends to get fired out guns at people. Not the friendliest stuff on earth. But to Eric the Healer, it was a manifestation of the evil inherent in our government: the intentional, willful, malicious poisoning of the Iraqi people with the toxic leftovers of our nuclear weapons program. Apparently, the government had even gone to such great lengths as having him followed and tapping his phone. So...a just enough cause, but wow, can you say "paranoid?"
Then he says something that makes everything he's uttered in the last few minutes seem totally rational: "Now, I don't want to weird you guys out and get into the politics behind all this, so I won't. But don't get me started about the aliens." Unfortunately, Eric the Healer seemed to have the wondrous ability to start and maintain entire conversations by himself, so our dumbstruck silence was moot. Eric the Healer got started about the aliens.
Apparently there's good aliens and bad aliens. There's the grey aliens, who are good aliens, and actually aren't grey (it's just their spacesuit!). Then there's the bad aliens - the lizard people who are working with our government towards all sorts of nefarious ends.
By this time, we were reaching the end of the lift, so as we parted Eric the Healer told us to look for the book he was writing and the movie that would inevitably be based on it. Oh, I'll be looking for it, alright.
Godspeed, you crazy bastard. And make sure to drink only rainwater and grain alcohol, or the reptile-alien controlled government will get you with that evil fluoridation.