{"id":322,"date":"2006-02-15T19:23:31","date_gmt":"2006-02-16T02:23:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/archives\/2006\/02\/15\/vail-day-two\/"},"modified":"2006-02-15T19:23:31","modified_gmt":"2006-02-16T02:23:31","slug":"vail-day-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2006\/02\/15\/vail-day-two\/","title":{"rendered":"Vail-Day Two"},"content":{"rendered":"

Take me back, carry me back
Down to gasoline alley where I started from<\/em><\/p>\n

I was sitting here listening to my iPod through Felice’s JBL On Stage speakers and I heard Elton John’s "The King Must Die".<\/p>\n

You see I’ve got a playlist.\u00c2\u00a0 Of the 200 most played songs in my iTunes library.\u00c2\u00a0 I pull it up when I only want to hear familiar music.\u00c2\u00a0 Like when I’m on my back doing my dreaded back exercises.<\/p>\n

I heard the Eels’ "Jeannie’s Diary".\u00c2\u00a0 Dido’s "Sand In My\u00c2\u00a0 Shoes".\u00c2\u00a0 Even Boston’s "Foreplay\/Long Time".\u00c2\u00a0 And when I was done, I took the iPod and speakers downstairs and put them up on the kitchen counter and plopped down behind my PowerBook and looked out the window.\u00c2\u00a0 At the gray sky.\u00c2\u00a0 And snow-covered mountains.\u00c2\u00a0 And that’s when I heard "The King Must Die".<\/p>\n

I don’t know why my freshman year in college is my most memorable musical time frame.\u00c2\u00a0 Why the records I played in January 1971 mean so much more to me than any others.\u00c2\u00a0 Could it be finally getting into the groove of college?\u00c2\u00a0 Or, could it be Winter Term, when I took only one course and could go skiing every day.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, I’d go to "Political Campaigning" from 9-11 and then pick up my Rossis and Langes and troop down to the Mobil station to hitch a ride to the Middlebury College Snow Bowl.\u00c2\u00a0 And when I returned, after taking a shower, as the sun set over the Adirondacks, I’d lie on my bed in Hepburn Hall and listen to records.\u00c2\u00a0 Oftentimes on headphones.\u00c2\u00a0 Most specifically three.\u00c2\u00a0 The first two Elton John albums and Rod Stewart’s "Gasoline Alley".<\/p>\n

I know, today Rod Stewart is a joke.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe he’s got too many children and too many ex-wives, maybe he’s got bills to pay, maybe he had to throw in with Clive Davis and make those mediocre standards records.\u00c2\u00a0 But it cheapens his image.\u00c2\u00a0 Because, for a while there, Rod the Mod was God.<\/p>\n

Lying in bed this morning I told Felice it was "Another Grey Morning".\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what you do when you’re a music fan.\u00c2\u00a0 Quote song titles and lyrics constantly.<\/p>\n

But at about 10:30, the sun broke through.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 And with three inches of new snow, the skiing was heavenly.\u00c2\u00a0 We were gliding through a patina of powder, feeling like this was the only place we wanted to be.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’ve never been skiing on a bluebird day, you might not get it.\u00c2\u00a0 But, if you have, you know exactly what I mean.<\/p>\n

And then we dropped into the Back Bowls.\u00c2\u00a0 To ski Yonder Gully.\u00c2\u00a0 Which had been groomed the night before.<\/p>\n

But the catwalk over…\u00c2\u00a0 It was as windy as I’d ever experienced.\u00c2\u00a0 The air and the snow were blowing up thousands of feet from the bottom of the mountain, drifts were accumulating, the flakes were stinging our skin.\u00c2\u00a0 But we loved it.\u00c2\u00a0 Because we were OUT THERE!\u00c2\u00a0 We felt ALIVE!<\/p>\n

The run was great.\u00c2\u00a0 But the ride back up was horrific.\u00c2\u00a0 They had to slow the lift to a crawl and then STOP IT because of the wind.\u00c2\u00a0 But with our newly-purchased helmets, we just weren’t that cold.<\/p>\n

Yup, when I went to pick up my skis at Gorsuch this morning it turned out they’d FOUND the helmet I wanted to buy, it HADN’T been stolen.\u00c2\u00a0 And, stunningly, I adjusted to wearing the lid almost immediately.\u00c2\u00a0 And, on this windy day, it kept me so WARM!\u00c2\u00a0 I think that aphorism about 40% of your body heat escaping through your head is true, even if a headbanded drug researcher on the lift denied it.<\/p>\n

The seats had blown up on the downcoming chairs.\u00c2\u00a0 Parked at almost 11,000 feet in the Rockies we started playing a word game, to pass the time.\u00c2\u00a0 Eventually, the lift crawled back into action.\u00c2\u00a0 But, thereafter they started closing lifts left and right.\u00c2\u00a0 Even #2, Avanti, on the FRONT SIDE!\u00c2\u00a0 But we found some perfect snow, and avoided the wind by skiing behind ridges.\u00c2\u00a0 And, as we were swooping down the slopes we wore big smiles, because the sliding was JUST THAT GOOD!<\/p>\n

And when the ski day was over, while Felice was out renting a new pair of skis, I found myself in the living room staring out the window listening to thirty five year old songs.\u00c2\u00a0 And I felt that I was exactly where I was supposed to be.\u00c2\u00a0 It might have been 85 degrees in L.A. before we left, but I like it here better.\u00c2\u00a0 You feel you’re involved with life, not just letting it pass you by.<\/p>\n

Who’ll walk me down to church when I’m sixty years of age
When the ragged dog they gave me has been ten years in the grave<\/em><\/p>\n

And now my iPod has slipped to Elton’s "Sixty Years On".<\/p>\n

Life is about choices.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s just that you don’t realize you’re making them.\u00c2\u00a0 Doors are shutting constantly.\u00c2\u00a0 Oftentimes through inaction.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to grab hold of life.\u00c2\u00a0 And try to do and accomplish what you want.\u00c2\u00a0 Because it’s so difficult.<\/p>\n

What keeps you going are certain core things.\u00c2\u00a0 Which remain, even though the inception was long ago, even though you’re not sure exactly why you’re doing them anymore.<\/p>\n

I’ll never be as good a skier as I was thirty odd years ago, when I skied every day of the season, year after year.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, that’s not true.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s all about that edge.\u00c2\u00a0 Give me thirty days in a row and I’m there.<\/p>\n

I count on skiing.\u00c2\u00a0 It roots me.<\/p>\n

Along with music.<\/p>\n

I hear "Gasoline Alley" or "The King Must Die" or "Sixty Years On" and I feel my life makes sense.\u00c2\u00a0 That I’m still the same person I ever was.\u00c2\u00a0 And I need to know that.\u00c2\u00a0 In order to keep moving on.<\/p>\n

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Take me back, carry me backDown to gasoline alley where I started from I was sitting here listening to my iPod through Felice’s JBL On Stage speakers and I heard Elton John’s "The King Must Die". You see I’ve got a playlist.\u00c2\u00a0 Of the 200 most played songs in my iTunes library.\u00c2\u00a0 I pull it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-5c","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}