Reading: The Two Towers

14 December 2002: Skiing

I grew up being against skiing as a defense mechanism, because skiing was such a status symbol in Old Lyme, from the zipper bristling with lift tags to the constant conversation. Having found boots that don't cut off my circulation and shaped skis helped me, after ten years of sporadic bouts, to jump to intermediate from beginner. Okay, yes, I enjoy aspects of skiing. The air, the mountains, the views, the speed, the skill.

I have not found that the culture is any different than it was in second grade, though. On a quad lift, RDC and I sat looking about ourselves and ignoring our seatmates, who spoke of who owned how many houses in Vail and of the pleasure of the mountain before it was overrun by tourists. After haranguing the plague of Others, one addressed us, coyly, "And where are you from?"

Would they have felt any shame if we had said we lived in Dallas rather than Denver?

I still say we're tourists: we drive more than an hour to get to the mountain. If you live in Denver and visit Tiny Town, are you a tourist? Yes, because you don't live there. If you visit Rocky Mountain National Park, are you a tourist? Yes, because you don't live there. Similarly, if you visit a ski mountain for the day, you're a tourist. To deny this because you don't want to be lumped in with the Texans and Georgians and Germans and Kansans on the hill is snobby.

RDC told me to think about it in terms of going to a different beach in Connecticut than White Sands. All I could think was why the hell would I do that? I live on the best one. That's where my elitism comes in. But if I went to a different one, I'd be a tourist.

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New gripe: People writing UConn "UCONN"--as if it were an acronym instead of an abbreviation. What exactly do they think the O and two Ns stand for?

And, more appropriately for the day, people who talk really loudly, as if just to hear the sound of their own voices, essentially conducting a monologue, while in a really enclosed space such as, oh, say, an eight-person gondola. Was this man Julie the Cruise Director?