I was sitting in the lobby of the St. Regis and Brent said he likes old things, that he hates buying new shit. If you saw my wardrobe, you’d see I agree. Not only do I hate to shop, the old shit fits, I know it works. Until it doesn’t. A fellow hockey player moved the blade on Brent’s taped up skates, told him it was time for a new pair. I thought it was time for a new pair of ski poles today.

Funny how when you’re a teenager, two years is an eternity, what you had in junior high is considered an antique! I remember my father having ties that were ten years old! Now if something was made in the seventies, I still think it’s usable. But these poles were made in the nineties, they’re still state of the art. Or are they?

I checked Felice’s. Goode straps no longer attach in the same fashion. Would I be able to replace the strap on my pole? All day long I thought about this. Did I need to buy a whole new pair? Or could I go to City Market and purchase some tape, the kind doctors use, you know, Johnson & Johnson, and just tape the strap up, the way I used to fix my gloves. Or, if I contacted Goode did they have old inventory? Still, I’d gotten these poles back in ’96, at a pro rate to boot, was it time for a new pair?

I decided I’d hit every shop in Vail. But at the very first one, the stoner dude, and they’re all stoner dudes, thought he could help me. He’d been tripping over a box all day. He went back into the shop and extracted a faded cardboard box containing two new pole straps. Not only the exact same style as mine, but the same color! He replaced the broken one and gave me the extra for five bucks!

And as I exited Christy’s, a song started going through my brain. Bonnie Raitt’s "Luck Of The Draw".

I almost wrote about this album a couple of days ago. When "One Part Be My Lover" came over my iPod. The "Nick Of Time" album gets all the hype, but it’s the follow-up that’s a killer. "Luck Of The Draw" is every bit as good as Bonnie Raitt’s classic second album, "Give It Up", and it was cut twenty years later!

"Something To Talk About" was the initial single. "I Can’t Make You Love Me" got airplay. They’re good, but this album picks up steam as you play it. Instead of fading out, there’s newfound depth.

The killer is "One Part Be My Lover". I was married to someone like this. She wanted me so much, but she also wanted me to go away. It’s confusing to be on the receiving end of this kind of love.

"Not The Only One" is a jaunt.

"Slow Ride" has got more sexiness than the work of any of the divas on Top Forty today. But the track that sticks with me is "Luck Of The Draw".

You dust the bottles on the bar counter
You’re writing screenplays on the side
Three nights a week can keep a girl workin’
Sometimes it’s good to lose your pride

Do you believe in yourself? Do you believe you can make it? Then there’s no fall back position, no other choice, you can only go forward, even if it means you starve. Your friends have gotten graduate degrees, are buying houses, all you’ve got is your dream.

These things we do to keep the flame burnin’
And write our fire in the sky
Another day to see the world turnin’
Another avenue to try

Not every person with talent makes it. A key element is desire. How bad you need it. You’ve got to persevere, you’ve got to be tenacious, you’ve got to move past the depression, you can’t give up.

You turn around and say it’s last orders
You fix the ribbon in your hair
Tomorrow’s letter by the hall doorway
Could be the answer to your prayers

I used to wait for the letter in my mailbox. Now I wait for the e-mail on my computer. I sit at home, in my own thoughts, just hoping I’ll do something good enough that my so-called career will be furthered, that someone will want to pay me money. I can’t do anything else. I don’t want to do anything else.

And there are no guarantees. It’s truly in the luck of the draw.

It’s in the luck of the draw, baby
The natural law
Forget those movies you saw, little baby
It’s in the luck of the draw

Actually, I can’t forget those movies I saw. The ones when I still had spare time, when I wasn’t spending all my hours trying to make it. I can’t forget Kermit going to Hollywood, to stand up for himself and the Muppets. I want Orson Welles or someone just like him to push the button on his intercom and tell the powers-that-be to write the standard rich and famous contract for me!

But life rarely turns out like the movies. Julia Roberts doesn’t pick up a schmo in real life. You don’t make a million dollars by accident. Real life is about disappointment. But still, we have hope. That things will work out. That the luck of the draw will work in our favor.

And today it worked in mine. It’s the little surprises, the little triumphs, that keep us going.