It was minus ten at the top of Avanti.<\/p>\n
In January 1964, not long after the Beatles broke, Mr. Conley showed a promotional movie about Mt. Snow to our sixth grade class.\u00c2\u00a0 Looking for more dramatic skiing than Bobby Hickey’s backyard, wanting to swim in the outdoor pool, I implored my parents to take us.\u00c2\u00a0 Stunningly, they did.<\/p>\n
It was at the end of February.\u00c2\u00a0 The night after Cassius Clay knocked out Sonny Liston in Maine.\u00c2\u00a0 I remember hearing the news as I rode in the back of the VistaCruiser on the back roads of Southern Vermont, on the way to the Novice Inn, where we stayed all in one room, the kids in bunk beds.\u00c2\u00a0 Upon the recommendation of the desk clerk, we spent our first afternoon at Carinthia, a t-bar area adjacent to Mt. Snow that was annexed in the eighties.\u00c2\u00a0 My father survived on that one lesson for three years, it was enough to keep him going.<\/p>\n
Stunningly, my family got hooked on skiing.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, they were frightened by Mixing Bowl, the ostensible beginner slope at Mt.\u00c2\u00a0 Snow, but after conquering it they moved on to Little Beaver, they gained their ski legs.<\/p>\n
So it wasn’t tough to convince my parents to go skiing the following Christmas at Bromley, part of the "Magic Triangle", or "The Hub", with Magic Mountain and Stratton.\u00c2\u00a0 It was just one step north of Mt. Snow, and where Peter Donnelly, my seventh grade classmate, had a season pass.<\/p>\n
But we awoke on Christmas morning to rain.\u00c2\u00a0 I kept telling everybody that rain in Connecticut would be snow in Vermont, but alas, it was not to be.\u00c2\u00a0 When we arrived at Bromley it was pouring, you could see the grass through the snow, the next day the ski area was closed.\u00c2\u00a0 We drove home.\u00c2\u00a0 And when February school vacation arrived my parents were no longer willing to take the risk, we went to the Concord, in the Catskills.\u00c2\u00a0 After all, somebody my mother said was an expert skier had gone there and skied, and testified how great it was.<\/p>\n
I was disappointed.\u00c2\u00a0 The Catskills were not the Green Mountains.\u00c2\u00a0 I didn’t want to hang with the hoi polloi, I wanted to be with SKIERS, on a MOUNTAIN!<\/p>\n
Turns out the Concord had two t-bars.\u00c2\u00a0 And three slopes.\u00c2\u00a0 The snow was pretty good and the place was empty.\u00c2\u00a0 Who would come to the Concord to ski?<\/p>\n
Me.\u00c2\u00a0 I went every day.\u00c2\u00a0 Well, at least the first three days, before we were rained out on the fourth.<\/p>\n
As for the food and the entertainment…\u00c2\u00a0 Well, at least when people talk about the Catskills, I can say that I’ve BEEN!\u00c2\u00a0 The menu was irrelevant, my father ordered multiple entrees, and kept making jokes about this guy Neil Sebaka.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, "sebaka" was dog in Yiddish, or Russian, my father couldn’t stop laughing about the similarity in appellation.\u00c2\u00a0 And yes, one night in the main room Neil Sedaka did appear.\u00c2\u00a0 And we banged our…well, they’ve got chop sticks with balls on the end that you hit on the table instead of clapping, to save you the effort.<\/p>\n
Neil was pretty good.\u00c2\u00a0 He sang all his old hits.\u00c2\u00a0 Most of which we didn’t know, not being old enough when they hit.\u00c2\u00a0 This was before he came back with Elton in the seventies, he was already an oldies act.<\/p>\n
But like I said, I was there for the skiing.\u00c2\u00a0 Every day I’d take the bus to the slopes, and ski the same two runs over and over again (the third was for beginners).\u00c2\u00a0 Up and down, up and down.\u00c2\u00a0 Didn’t really bother me, after all, I was used to Bobby Hickey’s backyard.\u00c2\u00a0 But it did get boring.\u00c2\u00a0 And in a moment of boredom, I put my cheek on the t-bar.\u00c2\u00a0 And I felt this stickiness.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a cool sensation, I liked it.<\/p>\n
Finally, in March, my parents took us to Stratton.\u00c2\u00a0 Where I went to the top and skied the Wanderer.\u00c2\u00a0 They realized this was a different league from the Concord, and the FOLLOWING year they booked at Skylight Lodge once again, right down the road from Bromley.<\/p>\n
But we didn’t ski Bromley.\u00c2\u00a0 It had been too warm, Bromley’s southern exposure resulted in very little snow cover.\u00c2\u00a0 We went back to Stratton.\u00c2\u00a0 A day after it rained once again.\u00c2\u00a0 When the snow wasn’t snow, but ice.\u00c2\u00a0 When it was bitter cold, in the single digits.\u00c2\u00a0 And just shy of noon, I found myself on the t-bar.<\/p>\n
Stratton was the same mountain back then.\u00c2\u00a0 Well, except for the Sun Bowl.\u00c2\u00a0 But there were only five lifts.\u00c2\u00a0 Three chairs and two t-bars.<\/p>\n
They’ve long since ripped out the t-bars, for they were just too hard to ride.<\/p>\n
You see the Concord had Doppelmayr t-bars.\u00c2\u00a0 T’s on a long cord, they were easy to ride.\u00c2\u00a0 Stratton had Hall t-bars.\u00c2\u00a0 One long pipe, with a spring in the middle.\u00c2\u00a0 They were almost impossible to ride.\u00c2\u00a0 The t would twist, slide out from under your butt, and you’d fall off.<\/p>\n
If you were lucky, you had a partner on the t-bar, it made it much easier to ride, it balanced the forces.\u00c2\u00a0 But this day in 1965, I was out there alone.\u00c2\u00a0 And I got on the t-bar and it twisted.\u00c2\u00a0 But I wasn’t going to fall off.\u00c2\u00a0 I grasped the wooden bottom of the t with my two arms, I held on for dear life, I was going to make it to the top.<\/p>\n
And about two-thirds of the way up, my mind adrift, remembering the February before at the Concord, I stuck out my tongue and licked the stainless steel tube of the t-bar.<\/p>\n
I kid you not, this really happened.\u00c2\u00a0 You know how on a suspension bridge you get the urge to jump?\u00c2\u00a0 Well, you know that will kill you.\u00c2\u00a0 But I’d stuck my skin to a t before, I liked the sensation.\u00c2\u00a0 I was eleven, what did I know?<\/p>\n
Not much.<\/p>\n
You see my tongue instantly froze to the t-bar.<\/p>\n
NOW what do I do?<\/p>\n
I try to wiggle my tongue, I try adding saliva, nothing works, I’m locked on.\u00c2\u00a0 To this moving device.\u00c2\u00a0 With the unloading ramp rapidly approaching.<\/p>\n
I saw no option.\u00c2\u00a0 I jerked my head back, I ripped my tongue from the t-bar.<\/p>\n
And right there where I’d previously been stuck was a patch of skin.\u00c2\u00a0 About three quarters of an inch in diameter, close to perfectly round.<\/p>\n
It made no sense.<\/p>\n
I started to panic.\u00c2\u00a0 Had I left the better part of my tongue on the t-bar?\u00c2\u00a0 Would I be maimed FOREVER?<\/p>\n
I decided to spit in the snow, to see if…<\/p>\n
SHIT!\u00c2\u00a0 Actually, that’s not the word that went through my head, at the time I was not swearing.\u00c2\u00a0 But I was shocked to see drops of blood in the snow.<\/p>\n
Just minutes before I’d been whole, I’d been reasonable, I’d been together.\u00c2\u00a0 But I made one false move and now I was gonna be the guy who couldn’t speak, the one whose life was RUINED!<\/p>\n
I got to the top, I headed straight for the bottom.\u00c2\u00a0 Spitting all the while, trying to see if the bleeding had stopped.<\/p>\n
It hadn’t.<\/p>\n
I took off my skis.\u00c2\u00a0 I went into the base lodge.\u00c2\u00a0 I stuck my tongue out in front of the mirror.\u00c2\u00a0 There were two red spots.\u00c2\u00a0 And you could see where the skin had come unglued.\u00c2\u00a0 But I could speak.\u00c2\u00a0 My tongue worked.\u00c2\u00a0 But did it really?<\/p>\n
I calmed down.\u00c2\u00a0 But only half way.\u00c2\u00a0 I was past the point of crisis.\u00c2\u00a0 But was I out of danger?\u00c2\u00a0 Would the skin on my tongue grow back?\u00c2\u00a0 Was I still going to be impaired?<\/p>\n
Finally I found my dad.\u00c2\u00a0 He laughed.\u00c2\u00a0 It became a family joke.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’re looking for sympathy from my family…you’ve got the wrong group of people.<\/p>\n
Ultimately I was all right.\u00c2\u00a0 After a few weeks of checking my tongue out in the mirror, I convinced myself.<\/p>\n
Needless to say, I haven’t stuck any skin on any metal since, certainly not in the winter.\u00c2\u00a0 But every time it gets down in the single digits, my anxiety kicks up.<\/p>\n
It’s six degrees in Vail right now.\u00c2\u00a0 It never made it into double digits today.\u00c2\u00a0 Every thermometer I saw at the top of the mountain never made it above zero.<\/p>\n
I threw on my expedition long underwear, put on an extra turtleneck, bought new glove liners, my fingers still tingling from yesterday.\u00c2\u00a0 Still, I was anxious.\u00c2\u00a0 Because although I haven’t stuck any skin on metal in decades, I have gotten frostbite, the REAL frostbite, where your skin blisters, then scabs, then falls off.\u00c2\u00a0 But usually in Vermont it FEELS colder, there’s a bitter wind.\u00c2\u00a0 Whereas here in the Rockies, it’s a dry cold.\u00c2\u00a0 You don’t realize how bad it is until you’re skiing along and can no longer feel your fingers and toes.<\/p>\n
I tried not to stay out too long.<\/p>\n
But I’ve got to admit, my toes are throbbing a bit, my fingers are still tingling, and my nose…normally you don’t feel your nose, but I now feel mine.<\/p>\n
Still, I’m intact.\u00c2\u00a0 I escaped true danger.<\/p>\n
How do I know?<\/p>\n
I did a test.\u00c2\u00a0 On the Born Free Express.\u00c2\u00a0 I spit.\u00c2\u00a0 And the saliva was caught in midair by the safety bar, it never flew down to the open slope.\u00c2\u00a0 And the spittle froze instantly.\u00c2\u00a0 A glob on the bar, and a trailing tentacle.\u00c2\u00a0 It happened just that fast.<\/p>\n
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