What if I told you I skied an area today where you could still get fresh tracks at five p.m., would that be something you’re interested in?  On SEPTEMBER 1ST?

I’m reminded of my college days.  When there was no TV, not even cable and certainly no Internet.  Just a couple of thousand people in the middle of Vermont.  Listening to music all night and skiing all day.

We’re having an utterly fantastic time.  I don’t even want to think of leaving tomorrow.  The longer we’re here, the more we get into it. The newfound friends, the long conversations, the vertical landscape, the skiing.

Depending on where you were, there were between ten and twenty five inches of fresh today.  Not quite Utah light, but you just sat back on your boards and floated through.  I cut tracks on the Plateau that are STILL evident, five hours after I laid them down.  There’s a smile on everybody’s face.  The only reason we’re all cool with the lifts shutting down is we’re all spent.

They say that skiing is the closest thing to sex.  And today I felt it.

I’m gonna do my back exercises, experience two hours of Telluride Mountainfilm and the torchlight parade, and then the final dinner.  I haven’t felt this way since summer camp, lamenting the end of an experience.

Not only did it bring Felice and myself closer (and she’s fine by the way), we made friends I know will last a lifetime.  And at this age, that’s so hard to do.  At a time of life when so many believe their future is set in stone, I feel mine is wide open, ready to be filled with experiences.  I’m optimistic.  I’m happy.

Take me back
Carry me back
Down to gasoline alley where I started from

My love affair with skiing started in Bobby Hickey’s backyard.  And my passion brought me to Middlebury College, where I wasn’t restricted to skiing on the weekends, where I could go skiing every day.

They say you can’t deny your roots.  I guess mine are in the mountains.

And when I got back from the Middlebury College Snow Bowl, after standing in the hot shower for ten or fifteen minutes, I’d lie down on my bed in Hepburn Hall and play records.  That January, when I skied nine days straight, and then after a day off for sub-zero weather that had frostbitten my chin, ten days in a row more, the records I played most were the first two Elton John and Rod Stewart albums.  They came at the same time, in a box from the Record Club Of America.

I’ve bought thousands of records since then.  But these four are still some of my absolute favorites.  "No man’s a jester singing Shakespeare" reminds me of long afternoons at Mad River Glen, but the one song that came to mind as I sat down at the computer here in our sixth floor room at the Hotel Portillo was Rod Stewart’s "Gasoline Alley".

That acoustic guitar intro, reminding me life is about feelings, not acquisitions.

Then Ronnie Wood’s slide guitar, with the same exotic quality as  Chile.

And finally, Rod’s voice:

I think I know now what’s making me sad
It’s a yearnin’ for my own backyard
I realize maybe I was wrong to leave
Better swallow up my silly country pride

I lost my way there for a while.  I even went to LAW SCHOOL!

After losing my gig at Sanctuary, I even debated giving up the music business.

But I got back in touch with that inner desire to be a writer I got that first semester back at Middlebury, when I asked the English teacher whether I could do something creative and got an "A" when all the prep school kids were convinced I was gonna flunk, and phoned my mother and told her I was going to be a writer.

And then Jim Lewi implored me to come to Vail for a week in 1996.

That was last century.  That’s the best experience I’ve had in ten years.

Finally, I have a bookend.

I’m back to where I once belonged.