An Article from a Skiing Magazine

Grant lives at sea level. Grant drinks beer. Grant drinks so much beer that he has to brew it himself in order to remain financially solvent. Grant goes skiing in the Andes, however, and drinks nothing but water and Gatorade. And Grant’s friends begin calling him “Jennifer.” Cruel? Maybe. But is the mockery just? Does drinking at higher elevations really make a difference?

Turns out the I’m-from-New-Jersey-and-am-skiing-in-Utah excuse only pardons gaper powder skills. Most of the prevailing wisdom that altitude gets you wasted-er is founded on what Fox News calls “facts” and the rest of us call “utter bullshit.” Specifically, it’s based on a quasi-scientific study from the 1930s performed not by a doctor but by a psychologist.

According to a 1995 Austrian study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, boozing at 10,000 feet and at sea level produced identical levels of wanting to go to Denny’s and yell, “Spring Break ’08, bitches!” And a University of Texas article cited “no credible research evidence [that] alcohol makes you more intoxicated at high altitudes compared to sea level.”

Dr. Peter Hackett of the Institute for Altitude Medicine in Telluride concurs. “I recommend people not drink alcohol for the first couple of days at altitude. It depresses the breathing and could cause mountain sickness. And mountain sickness feels exactly like a hangover. It can be hard to tell the difference between the two. That’s the first 24 hours. After that, the body acclimatizes quickly. By the third day, you can drink as much as you like.”

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My thoughts:
Touché.

I Beg To Differ...

.......NOT.

Fun Size

So I have beef with candy-bar makers and their ineptitude to correctly market certain products. Most notably, 'fun size' candy bars. See image below:


For the sake of all things unconveyable, let's just say the image of the 'fun size' snickers, above, is "actual size." Now, my beef; this isn't 'fun size' - this is a TEASER.

Da Bird

So, remember that little blurb I wrote about my love affair with Brighton a few posts down? Well, I kinda feel like I'm cheating on her this season. Yeah, I got a Snowbird pass this year. F me, right? Snowbird has a tunnel. I won't use it. But, I did get a deal on my pass (one reason for switching mountains this year). Hopefully it snows a lot and don't miss my alma mater too much. I know, this is ridiculous, but still....

Stimulus Check = Push-Button 4WD

Ok. It's official. I'm horrible at updating this blog. I love reading other people's blogs, yet loathe putting new material up on mine. It's not that my life is disinteresting, I just never feel like sitting down at a computer and typing about myself. I guess this is why I've never been able to keep a solid journal over the years, either.

Well, here it is. My 1992 Subaru Loyale, which has been affectionately deemed (through suggestion of a very good friend), The Lieutenant. It's got 124,000 miles and I paid less than $1000 for the guy.


Pretty sexy, right? The LT has a 5-speed manual transmission with a push-button 4WD on the stick shift. And look at that white paint....sooooo gooood! That's the LT.

ed - 11/19/08: Oh yeah, behold - the mighty push-button!!

Land-Locked Seagulls

From birth until the age of 11, I lived just outside of Denver, Colorado. Probably the single-most confusing thing about my childhood was the fact that there were seagulls in Colorado. I knew this to be strange due to my infrequent trips to the Jersey shore whilst back east visiting relatives - seagulls belonged at the beach, not at 5280 feet above sea level; no, that's just not right.

However, here I've been in Salt Lake City, Utah since I was 18 and these silly birds are here too. I don't get it. They're clearly not here for the skiing. Following are some botched attempts at capturing these displaced water-fowl:






*Ed. Note 5/6/08: Great - so Utah's state bird is the seagull. This just keeps getting better and better. Thanks for this tip goes to one of my faithful blog readers.

**Ed. Note 5/7/08: Again, this post has stirred up more than I could have really hoped for. Apparently these birds worked "miracles" back in the mid-1850s. Check out wikipedia's facts HERE.

Ah Ski Ski Ski

Here's a picture of me summing up the 2006-2007 ski season:
Photo: T. Felton
That's right. This season was all-things not great in terms of snow.

Now, here's a picture of me summing up the 2007-2008 ski season:
Photo: T. Stark.
Can you tell the difference? That's right. So, this winter's been good. And when I say, good, I mean it in the sense that I don't care if I'm using proper grammer or not (good vs. well...yeah, whatever). Just look at that picture - I'm so happy that I could be peeing my pants and you wouldn't even know it because it's literally been balls-deep all season long.

Maybe this year just seems so much better than last year because it hardly snowed at all last year. No. That's not it. It's the fact that nearly every Friday Ullr has turned on the storm spigot and lets the flakes fall all-weekend-long. This past weekend, especially...some of the dryest snow I've skied in my life. I'm going to shut up now.