Blog posts from exile
So this one time Maia took us snowboarding at Mt. Baker.
Day 1 of Internet Exile. Fucked up colossally today!
So Maia's (scruffily handsome) brother Stefan is a snowboard instructor at Mt. Baker. Thus it was mutually beneficial for Roland and me to ride with him down to Mt. Baker this morning from Bellingham and make use of his snowboard-instructing services! Because we are n00bz. So we did. Ducker tagged along because we had to fill the car; our luggage accompanied us.
The problems began when Stefan handed me the keys to his Jetta, so Roland & I had a place to store our shoes etc. while we were snowboarding. We donned our gear, I tucked the key into a pocket, and we went on our merry way to the lesson.
When you are learning to snowboard, you wipe out. A lot. More than one person I spoke with (granted, it is possible that all of them were Bittners) described snowboarding as having a “short but steep” learning curve. (This has a lot in common with the slope leading to Chair 2, which by the way is basically terrible. It is also thus possibly unfair that Maia later made fun of me for describing snowboarding as a “high activation-energy activity.”)
So anyway I was wiping out profligately all over the proverbial map. Wiping out with sufficient frequency and vigor that anything that was in an unsecured pocket was likely to have been ejected! (Certain Russian playwrights would have a pretty good idea of where this narrative is leading.)
Anyway, after the lesson, Roland and I retreated with Stefan to the ski lodge, where we met Stefan and Maia's mom, who had prepared a ridiculously exciting spread of many different things that I turned out to be allergic to. Realizing that I was in some discomfort, I inquired after the availability of Benadryl. Learning that some was to be had in the Jetta, I began searching through my pockets for the key and um so anyway apparently I put the key to the Jetta into an unsecured pocket and it tumbled out somewhere along the Chair 2 run.
After no small degree of panic, things more or less worked out? Maia found someone to open the car - though the power lock system on the Jetta refused to operate the other doors, or the trunk. We did manage to retrieve our luggage by folding down the back seat. A snag: Roland's wallet (including his credit cards and ID) and iPhone were locked in the glove compartment.
It turns out that another key to the Jetta exists.
It is a valet key. It will not open a glove compartment.
Roland is leaving for Seattle tomorrow, and then flying to California. It sure would be nice if he had his ID with him!
Heh. Heh.
So, well, the car's parked on top of Mount Baker and Maia's mom is going to be doing a lot of driving to get the key and get back to the mountain and get the car, which I feel basically terrible about, but at some point I'm sure someone will resolve this. Roland may have an awkward experience trying to board an airplane with a government ID - we'll see how that goes for him. And with no phone, either! :(
Buuuuuuuut snowboarding. I'm going further and further down progressively more interesting hills without accidentally wiping out! It turns out that being willing to get back on your feet is important, especially once it becomes difficult to actually physically become upright. Lots of throwing yourself around is required. Also, keep your front knee bent, use the uphill edge of the board, and don't catch yourself with your wrists when you fall! All of these seem commonsense until you're actually snowboarding and you fail to do any of them. Or maybe I just only learn things the hard way. (This last statement being demonstrably true.)
Chair lifts are terrifying. By the way. I'm actually pretty afraid of heights, but only if I'm not distracted. The chair lift stopped today while I was halfway up, which gave me ample time to notice how far off the ground I was and how little was holding me into the chair lift and how few means I had of removing myself from that situation and I almost started actually panicking but managed to talk myself out of it.
Aren't chair lifts a strange invention? I think they are.
Anyway it's like what 10pm and we're all totally wiped. Part of it is the time zone, I think, but hey, this winter sports stuff is Serious Business. We're in a cabin in Glacier for the next few days, because Maia is awesome and booked it for us. It's really cute! Though there is no Internet access. More snowboarding tomorrow! I'm psyched.
--
Day 2 of Internet exile. Better!
Good news: Maia's mom found a key to the Jetta, in Bellingham!
Bad news: It is the valet key. It will not open the glove compartment.
Good news: The car doesn't need to be towed to Glacier! And VW folks in Bellingham can probably get the glove box open. Maybe.
I did about the right amount of snowboarding today, I think. We started a bit late - it turns out that everyone (like, each of the seven of us) woke up at 7, thought about it for a minute, said “nah,” and turned off their alarms, so we didn't get out of the house until 10:30 or so. The mountain was really clear for a couple hours - beautiful views of the adjacent mountains - but then a storm came through, winds picked way the hell up, and visibility dropped way down. We all hopped on the Chair 7 lift after lunch, and by the time we got to the top (after enduring blown snow peppering our faces) they closed the mountain. I had an awesome last run, though! I blew through sections that I consistently wiped out multiple times on earlier in the day. I did crash pretty impressively - but only once! - and the rest of my run was pretty smooth. Things I need to learn how to do: slow down without crashing... most of my crashes happen when I react to being afraid of losing control, which becomes self-fulfilling. All in your head, man.
Anyway, it turns out that there's a really strong culture of hitchhiking in the Mt. Baker snowboarding community. There's a road that runs straight from Bellingham to Mt. Baker through Glacier (which is where our cabin is), and it's not uncommon to see snowboarders with their thumbs out somewhere along the road or at the top of the mountain. For complex reasons, we didn't have enough seats in our car this morning, so Joe and I volunteered to try hitchhiking it up. In about ten minutes, we succeeded! A couple was pulling into the general store in Glacier on their way up to the mountain and made room for us in the back of their Outback. (Subaru is a big brand up here.) The woman was totally a stereotypical Pac NW snowboarder; her date seemed kind of rough-and-tumble. “From Boston? Well, you don't want to say the wrong thing to the wrong people in Boston - they'll fuck you up.” She was driving his car, due to some unelaborated difficulty with Washington's finest the previous day. But it was a smooth ride and it all worked out! Faith in strangers, even the sketchy ones: rewarded.
(I'm probably way in a karma pit, right now.)
Anyway Roland was reunited with his stuff in time and nobody died! Day 3 was probably the most fun; I will update with stories about it... later.
Day 1 of Internet Exile. Fucked up colossally today!
So Maia's (scruffily handsome) brother Stefan is a snowboard instructor at Mt. Baker. Thus it was mutually beneficial for Roland and me to ride with him down to Mt. Baker this morning from Bellingham and make use of his snowboard-instructing services! Because we are n00bz. So we did. Ducker tagged along because we had to fill the car; our luggage accompanied us.
The problems began when Stefan handed me the keys to his Jetta, so Roland & I had a place to store our shoes etc. while we were snowboarding. We donned our gear, I tucked the key into a pocket, and we went on our merry way to the lesson.
When you are learning to snowboard, you wipe out. A lot. More than one person I spoke with (granted, it is possible that all of them were Bittners) described snowboarding as having a “short but steep” learning curve. (This has a lot in common with the slope leading to Chair 2, which by the way is basically terrible. It is also thus possibly unfair that Maia later made fun of me for describing snowboarding as a “high activation-energy activity.”)
So anyway I was wiping out profligately all over the proverbial map. Wiping out with sufficient frequency and vigor that anything that was in an unsecured pocket was likely to have been ejected! (Certain Russian playwrights would have a pretty good idea of where this narrative is leading.)
Anyway, after the lesson, Roland and I retreated with Stefan to the ski lodge, where we met Stefan and Maia's mom, who had prepared a ridiculously exciting spread of many different things that I turned out to be allergic to. Realizing that I was in some discomfort, I inquired after the availability of Benadryl. Learning that some was to be had in the Jetta, I began searching through my pockets for the key and um so anyway apparently I put the key to the Jetta into an unsecured pocket and it tumbled out somewhere along the Chair 2 run.
After no small degree of panic, things more or less worked out? Maia found someone to open the car - though the power lock system on the Jetta refused to operate the other doors, or the trunk. We did manage to retrieve our luggage by folding down the back seat. A snag: Roland's wallet (including his credit cards and ID) and iPhone were locked in the glove compartment.
It turns out that another key to the Jetta exists.
It is a valet key. It will not open a glove compartment.
Roland is leaving for Seattle tomorrow, and then flying to California. It sure would be nice if he had his ID with him!
Heh. Heh.
So, well, the car's parked on top of Mount Baker and Maia's mom is going to be doing a lot of driving to get the key and get back to the mountain and get the car, which I feel basically terrible about, but at some point I'm sure someone will resolve this. Roland may have an awkward experience trying to board an airplane with a government ID - we'll see how that goes for him. And with no phone, either! :(
Buuuuuuuut snowboarding. I'm going further and further down progressively more interesting hills without accidentally wiping out! It turns out that being willing to get back on your feet is important, especially once it becomes difficult to actually physically become upright. Lots of throwing yourself around is required. Also, keep your front knee bent, use the uphill edge of the board, and don't catch yourself with your wrists when you fall! All of these seem commonsense until you're actually snowboarding and you fail to do any of them. Or maybe I just only learn things the hard way. (This last statement being demonstrably true.)
Chair lifts are terrifying. By the way. I'm actually pretty afraid of heights, but only if I'm not distracted. The chair lift stopped today while I was halfway up, which gave me ample time to notice how far off the ground I was and how little was holding me into the chair lift and how few means I had of removing myself from that situation and I almost started actually panicking but managed to talk myself out of it.
Aren't chair lifts a strange invention? I think they are.
Anyway it's like what 10pm and we're all totally wiped. Part of it is the time zone, I think, but hey, this winter sports stuff is Serious Business. We're in a cabin in Glacier for the next few days, because Maia is awesome and booked it for us. It's really cute! Though there is no Internet access. More snowboarding tomorrow! I'm psyched.
--
Day 2 of Internet exile. Better!
Good news: Maia's mom found a key to the Jetta, in Bellingham!
Bad news: It is the valet key. It will not open the glove compartment.
Good news: The car doesn't need to be towed to Glacier! And VW folks in Bellingham can probably get the glove box open. Maybe.
I did about the right amount of snowboarding today, I think. We started a bit late - it turns out that everyone (like, each of the seven of us) woke up at 7, thought about it for a minute, said “nah,” and turned off their alarms, so we didn't get out of the house until 10:30 or so. The mountain was really clear for a couple hours - beautiful views of the adjacent mountains - but then a storm came through, winds picked way the hell up, and visibility dropped way down. We all hopped on the Chair 7 lift after lunch, and by the time we got to the top (after enduring blown snow peppering our faces) they closed the mountain. I had an awesome last run, though! I blew through sections that I consistently wiped out multiple times on earlier in the day. I did crash pretty impressively - but only once! - and the rest of my run was pretty smooth. Things I need to learn how to do: slow down without crashing... most of my crashes happen when I react to being afraid of losing control, which becomes self-fulfilling. All in your head, man.
Anyway, it turns out that there's a really strong culture of hitchhiking in the Mt. Baker snowboarding community. There's a road that runs straight from Bellingham to Mt. Baker through Glacier (which is where our cabin is), and it's not uncommon to see snowboarders with their thumbs out somewhere along the road or at the top of the mountain. For complex reasons, we didn't have enough seats in our car this morning, so Joe and I volunteered to try hitchhiking it up. In about ten minutes, we succeeded! A couple was pulling into the general store in Glacier on their way up to the mountain and made room for us in the back of their Outback. (Subaru is a big brand up here.) The woman was totally a stereotypical Pac NW snowboarder; her date seemed kind of rough-and-tumble. “From Boston? Well, you don't want to say the wrong thing to the wrong people in Boston - they'll fuck you up.” She was driving his car, due to some unelaborated difficulty with Washington's finest the previous day. But it was a smooth ride and it all worked out! Faith in strangers, even the sketchy ones: rewarded.
(I'm probably way in a karma pit, right now.)
Anyway Roland was reunited with his stuff in time and nobody died! Day 3 was probably the most fun; I will update with stories about it... later.