The Milk Fairy

Dearest friends,

I have a wonderous tale to relate to you. Last night, as I slept soundly in the back of my van, I was visited by the Milk Fairy.

"The Milk Fairy?" You ask. "I've heard of the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, but never a Milk Fairy."

Ahh! But maybe you have.

Each night, when all the boys and girls are sleeping, the Milk Fairy flits her butterfly wings and checks on all the bottles of milk in the land. Sometimes, when she finds a very special boy or girl, she puts a few lumps in their milk and makes it taste a bit sour - much like licking the top of a nine volt battery. Some bottles she fulls with lumps, others she puts in just a few, and most bottles she leaves just as she found them.

Now, I have been visited by the Milk Fairy, and her cousin, the Unrefridgerated Chicken Fairy, many times. Indeed, many months ago when I was in Canada I was visited by the Milk Fairy with unnerving regularity. But since leaving Canada I haven't seen much of her. Maybe I just haven't been special enough.

But I've missed my regular visits, and so I've taken to leaving my milk in an esky/cooler/chilly bin in the back of my van. Also, I do not have a fridge. Surely, I thought to myself, these warm sunny days have to encourage the Milk Fairy to come my way!

And so I was less surprised than might otherwise have been the case when this morning I tipped up my milk bottle over my cereal and not a drop came out! My, I thought, I must have been extra special yesterday! This milk is practically solid!

Indeed, I must have been extra specially special, because the milk wasn't even lumpy or vile smelling. It was just thick and congealed. Almost like yoghurt, and I do like yoghurt. So I tasted a bit, and it was actually pretty good. I shook up the milk bottle a bit to get the contents moving and managed to pour out a few heary dollops onto the cereal. Sure, breakfast was a bit heavier than normal, but entirely palatable. That was over nine hours ago now, and I haven't been even the least bit nauseous. Somehow the Milk Fairy managed to turn my milk into something closely approximating yoghurt overnight!

Sometimes magic really does happen.

I have a job!

Friends, I have been in a dark and terrible place. A place where you are powerless, unable to communicate with the world, unable to reach the people around you. Where the comforting sounds and sights of the places and people you know are lost to you.

That’s right, my friends, I have been without internet. I have had a long immersion in the communications technology 1990s, and I have suffered greatly at it hands.

But that’s not really an excuse. I mostly haven’t been writing in this blog because I’m lazy. Also, because it takes a while to build up the requisite level of confusion and chaos in my life to actually be able to write about it. No one comes to read this blog to see how organised and together I am as a human being. They come instead to marvel at my continued existence in the face of strange circumstances and abiding personal incompetence. And so I am proud to return to the internet and say “Yes! I am alive.” And also “My life is impractical and silly.”

There are a few stories I probably should have written here as they occurred, so I will try to fill in the backlog in some kind of coherent way. In the meantime, this is what I have been doing:

In May I quit my job and went to Canada. Quitting one’s job is wonderful and I encourage all of you to try it. In Canada I wooed a lady, climbed a little and sent people emails about monoskis. In June I flew to New Zealand for the winter and waited for it to snow. It didn’t snow and I spent most of my time in Christchurch where the weather was horrible. Eventually I bought a car and could leave, which was very soothing. I think I may have confessed to having a soft spot for Christchurch in the past, but now I think it is a grim and depressing place where it rains all the time. It finally snowed in late June and I drove up to Broken River for another season of skiing and poor personal hygiene. In slightly crazy news, I am working at Broken River. As in having a job. You read that correctly. I perform services in exchange for financial remuneration. It is a strange turn of events. Fear not, I have not completely sold out. I am the backup cook – I cover the real cook for two days a week feeding the staff and guests. This may come as a surprise to many of you who have no idea that I have any kind of culinary skill. It is certainly an ongoing surprise for me. My experience in this job can be best summarised in two adjectives: Terrifying and greasy.

Cooking at BR is terrifying because I have no idea what I’m doing. I am completely untrained in this field and have almost no relevant experience. The only experience I have is cooking as a volunteer in the BR kitchens last year when the chef left the mountain early in the season and there was no one else to fill in. I have never worked alongside anyone more competent than myself or had any real tuition to speak of. The full-time cook, Ray, has given me a bunch of valuable advice which has enabled me to cut up roast chickens and do some other useful stuff. Without him I would be in considerable distress. Each night that I work the guests ask me what we’re having for dinner and I strenuously avoid answering the question because I’m worried that if I actually tell them they’ll know when I’ve screwed up. If I say “Roast chicken” and then we end up eating leftover cake, that looks bad. But if I just pretend that I was intentionally using the chicken to make the oven smell savoury while I reheated some cake that looks like I’m some kind of Heston Blumenthal food genius. Which I am not. People regularly come into the kitchen to ask if I need a hand and I often tell them I don’t just so they’ll go away and I can sob and tear at my hair and swear quietly into my pots in peace. Apparently the food has been OK, which I can only attribute to beginners’ luck.

Cooking at BR is greasy because, well, there’s grease on everything. Especially me. I don’t have enough clothes to change for every meal, and I don’t have time to wash my clothes while I’m cooking so everything I wear gets covered in grease. This isn’t so bad if I’m just doing my usual two days a week, but at the moment I’m cooking for five days to cover for Ray while he goes to Australia to watch a live Pink concert (this is, incidentally, about the most misleading piece of true information I could possibly give you from which you could form a first impression of him – whatever you’re imagining about him, it’s hilariously wrong), so you can imagine what it’s like. Also, I don’t bathe enough. It’s hard to be motivated to do so when you know you’re just going to get covered in grease again. A reliable witness has testified that I smell like felafel, which is a nice way of saying oil. It is actually disturbing how much oil and butter and cream and salt and stuff goes into food when you’re cooking for lots of people. Also, deep frying. Night after night I cannot tell if I have just smoked out the kitchen and dining room (which is often) of my glasses are just covered in a thick coating of fat (which is all the time). There is a block of lard which sits on a shelf in one of the store rooms and glistens malevolently like something from a Stephen King novel. I try not to make eye contact with it.

 

I have just one more meal to make to get through this five day stint. I’m not entirely sure what it will be, but I have enough back-up cake now that it doesn’t really matter. God help my arteries.

Back to Work

I have great news. Because it is me, this great news is tinged with a hint of anxiety but I will get to that below. I got another article published! This time in NZSkier magazine, which is the premier means of magazine based snow related communication in New Zealand. Of course I'm quite chuffed, but I actually knew it was getting published ages ago, so some of the excitement has worn off a little. In fact, it was published so long ago that I had vaguely convinced myself that it was a sincere, heartfelt tale of my strong connection to Broken River ski field and its loyal community of clubbies and staff. In fact, I was actually thinking it might be a bit embarrassing to have something serious and honest and emotional in the public domain that was associated with me.

But, dear readers, you ought to know me well enough to be assured that I would never write something that might conceivably come back to embarrass me or my friends in a public setting. Who would be so foolish as to put something potentially embarrassing and awkward onto the public record?

Well, me. Obviously.

To my great relief, the finished article is not at all sincere or heartfelt. But to my consternation and dismay, it's snarky and disrespectful, just as you have probably come to expect. In it I describe Broken River's neighbours, Craigieburn, as "the nicest kind of sexist", list a number of ways to avoid paying for things at Broken River, make snide comments about some of the volunteering habits of the local clubbies and document a few legally dubious activities conducted by my friends. All in a nice way, of course.

Now the BR clubbies will forgive me for my indiscretions, because they're nice and they already know I'm a nincompoop. But when I wrote those fateful words about Craigieburn, a field which takes its reputation pretty seriously, I never imagined that I might be spending any time there. But now it looks like I'll be over that way quite a lot, and not only are they likely to look harshly upon me for my association with a rival ski field, I've now publically dissed their founding fathers in the one publication they're actually likely to look at and read. I may be the only person ever to curse that too many people read NZSkier magazine.

By the by, my bit of the magazine is linked below (pictures by Joe Harrison, BR stalwart, rad skier and all around good dude). But seriously, if you can buy this magazine you should. Or look at the ads or something. Keeping small publications like this alive keeps the dreams of dirtbags like me alive.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxqrPZnL2_zhY3ZtdTYyWWRVNDQ/edit?usp=sharing

Also, skiing in a few weeks? Is anyone else excited?

Dear readers

Hey folks,

Thanks for reading my blog. Every extra page view feeds another lump of coal into the fire of my dirtbag soul. And now, if it's not too much hassle, I'd like to ask you to do me a favour.

I recently had an article published in Vertical Life magazine, a climbing rag based in Melbourne, about my trip to the Bugaboos. The editors saw this blog through the facebook page of a mutual friend and liked it enough to ask me to write for them. The magazine is available online, so it won't cost you anything to download and read (it's also pretty cool, making it excellent value for money). If you download it, that will increase their circulation and help their business and it will make me look good for writing a witty and informative article. Maybe they will ask me to write again. You don't even have to read it, just downloading the mag is enough.

You can get it here: www.verticallifemag.com.au

The article has photos and words and stories about catching chipmunks in pots and climbing things and a detailed explanation of The Snafflehound. It's great (or at least mediocre).

Thanks.

The Problem With Having Money

This trip is the first time I've taken time off work to go somewhere. Every other time I've gone away to do fun stuff I've either been a student or quit my job before I left. Stictly speaking, I'm unemployed now because my last contract with the ACT Government ended the day before I flew out, but they have said they'll give me more work when I get back, so for all intents and purposes I'm just taking time off work.

I think most people would be happy with this arrangement. Indeed, many people do their travelling like this - fitting trips in around work. In reality, I am fitting my trip in around frisbee, and work aligns fairly well with frisbee, but the effect is the same. And the knowledge that I'm returning to a job in Canberra has completely eroded my capacity to not spend money.

For example, when I arrived in Rossland my old boss offered me a very good deal on some skis that I have been coveting for a year or so. Skis that I absolutely don't need. So I bought them. And a new helmet. And goggles. I would have bought gloves too if he'd had anything in my size. On my last two flights, I had bought and eaten so much food before the flight departed that I forgot to eat the complimentary snack they gave us. I didn't even surrepticiously stuff the tiny bag of weird nibbles into my pack - unthinkable under normal monetary conditions. On the way over here, when my instincts were still sharp, I ended up walking off the plane with my snack roll and the roll that was supposed to go to the person sitting next to me. She was asleep and didn't seem like the type to eat the roll and then I didn't want to be all "Here's the roll the air hostess brought you while you were asleep (p.s. I'm really creepy and have been saving this roll for you)" and it was awkward and basically it was better just to hide the roll and pretend the whole thing never happened and then eat it later on. Anyway how I got the roll is beside the point. The point is that on one flight I saved 200% of the normally available rolls and then on the other flight I saved 0% of the available snack thingys. That's a pretty big drop (in percentage terms).

Then it occurred to me that I would need bindings for the new skis. Normally I'm protected from impulse purchases of bindings because the ones I like are hard to find. But not in Bozeman. There are three stores in town that sell them, which is three more than I've ever seen anywhere else in the world. I'm just going to walk into the store, hand over the skis and get them to mount new bindings. I won't even have to dodgy up a drill bit with duct tape. It feels like cheating.

The problem with having money is that it makes it way too easy to buy things. I've had money before, but always with the caveat that I might never find a job again. But with my newfound confidence in future paycheques I've had an astounding insight into the world of stable long-term employment. Has it really been like this for you people all along? Why didn't someone warn me?

I'm not sure I can survive this new arrangement. For a start I'm swiftly being overwhelmed with stuff. Admittedly, some of it I didn't buy (or at least not recently) - I've also gained two towels and a painting. I'm also struggling with food. This morning I went to a bakery (it was gluten free - huge mistake) and when confronted with two ostensibly tasty options (that were actually gluten free) I briefly lost control and bought both of them. Which turned out to be OK because I ended up missing lunch. But if I had stumbled across somewhere to buy lunch later in the day I probably would have bought several of those too.

I can only hope that I return to safe, predictable unemployment soon, before any permanent damage is done and/or I buy furniture, at which point all will be lost.

Details

The people have asked for details, and here they are (although a bit late - the full update is to follow). This is the message I sent Marie on Facebook to commence "Operation Date Maud's Hot Sister 2: The Date That Would Not End Even Though Both Parties Wanted It To".

"Ola Marie,

Every night I lie awake, tossing and turning, thinking of our night together in Whistler. Of our meal, or our drive around the town - the lake, the ski area car park. Or later, at your house, when I lay waiting for you, ready for romance.

Maybe we went too fast, maybe we wanted too much. Maybe we looked for too many answers, when the power of love comes only from questions.

And so I find myself in Whistler once more, wondering if there is a second chance for us. For love.

My phone is broken, but my heart beats strong. Tell me when you are free. I cannot wait to see you again.

Love always,
Juan"

To which I received a mixed response. She accepted my friend request (which I would have advised against), but she did not reply.

More details to come.

Our Love Does Not Need A Second Chance

I was going to write about how I ended up in Rossland and all the things I've done since landing in Canada (don't worry, it's a short list), but let's be honest. Pretty much everyone reading this blog is only interested in my abortive romance with Maud's Hot Sister.

I will be honest. Things are not going well on the Maud's Hot Sister front. And not for want of trying. In Whistler, it took no time at all to assemble all the necessary elements for wooing: A rudimentary knowledge of Mr Big's seminal romantic-rock classic I'm The One Who Wants To Be With You, a collection of friends to provide alternating moral support and coercive social pressure according to my somewhat variable motivation, a sweater vest, Maud's Hot Sister's address, the complicitude of Maud's Hot Sister's Sister (Maud) and, perhaps most importantly, a backup singer with a voice of pure gold to hide in a bush and sing the harmony/backup parts that make Mr Big's hit so loin stirring good.

Indeed, all of the pieces of the puzzle were in place to provide a surprise rendition of one of modern music's greatest songs to Maud's Hot Sister while she listened from the balcony of her own house. Short of turning up in her bed scantily clad and surrounded by candles and rose petals it was the most romantic thing I could think of that was free, and I've already tried the other option.

The only piece missing was Maud's Hot Sister. Who was in Vancouver THE WHOLE TIME. I can't help but think that someone should have alerted me to this possibility. I don't take this dating business lightly - I could have gone to a lot of trouble and considerable expense for nothing.

The apparent up-side of Maud's Hot Sister being in Vancouver was that she was heading to Rossland a few days after I arrived and it synched up pretty well with my plans. And so, on Wednesday, rather than candles and bubble baths and sustained self loathing, I met Maud's Hot Sister at a Starbucks in Vancouver and the two of us set out on the 9-ish hour drive to Rossland.

In the uplifting feel-good comedy that will eventually be made about my life, this car trip will be represented as a montage with some kind of folksy adult contemporary soundtrack and gently shifting images of the two of us smiling at each other, looking at the the beautiful scenery, maybe sharing a stack of pancakes that later generations will look back on as an example of poor role-modelling for healthy food choices.

But none of those things happened. Oh God how I yearned for pancakes. For the sweet release of ice cream and maple syrup. For diabetes.

In reality, it was a long, tiring and inefficient journey with innumerable small stops and some super sketchy driving over a mountain pass in a snow storm. In keeping with the tradition of me driving terrible vehicles in Canada, our ride had bald all season tyres (which means not winter tyres, which means terrifying) and headlights that didn't have either high-beam or low-beam. I couldn't work out which was missing, which in itself is something of a worry. Also, the driver's side seat belt didn't really work.

Anyway, we left late so we slept the night in the back of the car near the top of the sketchy mountain pass. The next morning the storm had cleared out and we stopped in Princeton, then Keremeos, then Oosoyous, and then again in Oosoyous in a different place. Look it up on Google Maps people, there pretty much aren't two distinct places in Oosoyous you can stop, and yet...

The romance between Maud's Hot Sister and I has survived many setbacks. It thrived despite being conducted for most of its life through second-degree text messaging. It persisted in spite of my obviously spurious claims to be half-Costa Rican, my flat out lies about dancing or speaking Spanish, my terrible haircut, my lack of a white suit. Most significantly, it survived in spite of the mutual disinterest of both parties and the fact that it was completely fictional in every important respect. But it could not survive the drive from Vancouver to Rossland. In our 20 hour approximation of a 9 hour journey we went straight from the thrill and excitement of new love and dating to the grim, jaded habit of infatuation held too fast for too long.

And so, dear friends, I announce to you the end of my first great attempt at wooing. Yes, perhaps there is time for love to flourish again. Maybe we can arrange a romantic interlude the All-U-Can-Eat Spaghetti night at the local diner. But really, I think that it's time to move on. There's a whole world of people with hot sisters out there. It's time to make another lucky girl extremely confused and uncomfortable.

Back in Action

Dear friends, this blog is rising from its peaceful slumber in a time of great personal distress. And in times of great personal distress, I turn to the internet for succor, for the wisdom to sooth my troubled soul.

Let's say that you were going overseas, perhaps to North America, and during your trip you might hypothetically be going to Whistler. Now consider that in this purely hypothetical situation Whistler might be the home of a person who is the sister of another person who is well known to you. And to continue our speculation, purely for the sake of consideration, with no necessary relation to the real world, let us mull over the possibility that some time ago you might have taken this person, the sister of the person know by you - the one who lives in Whistler (hypothetically) - on a date which was spectacular in both its awkwardness and in unlikeliness to result in any kind of romantic liaison.

In this purely hypothetical situation, it is not really worth speculating about whether or not your should take the sister, who might, for the sake of argument, be considered hot, on a second date. Clearly, you should. Far more fruitful grounds for speculation would be to ask where you should take her on said date, and what you should wear. And what you should do if she has a boyfriend. That last question seems quite pertinent in our purely academic exercise in abstract thought.

So, I turn to you, wise and noble internet blog readers, to guide me in this time of personal (hypothetical) distress. Where should I take Maud's Hot Sister and what should I wear? A sushi dinner date is out - we've done that and I still wake up in a cold sweat some nights thinking about the bill. A movie is cheap and informal, so I wouldn't need a suit, but it would also go for TWO HOURS and there would be an implied duty to pull some kind of "yawn and casually put your arm over the other person's shoulder" move which I am unequivocally uncomfortable with. Where do people go on dates? What do they do? What do they wear? Why does anyone ever think it will be a good idea?

And finally, sweet internet, if you can think of any good reason why I shouldn't take Maud's Hot Sister on a date, please tell me what it is. At this stage I'm of the opinion that to return to Whistler and not even try to take Maud's Hot Sister on a second date would be unconscionably cowardly. That, of course, doesn't mean that I think it would be pleasant or a good idea.

Although there are a few things going in my favor. I have a vastly superior haircut, I don't have a van that won't start in the rain, and I have plenty of time to shop around my home town for a white suit if that proves to the be wooing weapon of choice.

Also, in other news (since I'm actually posting I might as well get everything out of my system), I recently met up with an old school friend who works for Walmart. It was wonderful to be able to express my gratitude to him for the generosity of his fine organisation showed me during my extended stay in their car park in Penticton (and one other night spent in their car park in Kelowna - which has wonderful views if you're ever out that way). Also, Walmart was the supplier of my much loved octopus towel, which I will be reunited with soon. He also suggested that if I visit him in San Francisco he would be able to take me to the Walmart head office and maybe even find me someone vaguely important to thank in person. I expect that that won't be possible until my next trip to North America, but I look forward to the opportunity immensely.

And for those of you who care, I'll be heading to Canada and the US on the 1st of Feb, coming back to Canberra in time for frisbee training on the 19th.

The Apologetic Hiatus

Poor neglected blog. I have thought of you many times in the last month or so, but only in the fleeting, abstract sense with which one thinks about filing one's taxes, rather than any kind of productive way.

Which is not to say that there hasn't been anything to write about. I have, in the fashion to which you may be accustomed, done all manner of stupid things in the last few weeks. It's actually hard to believe that the last post was a mere four weeks ago. It's a long time for a pokey little interwub blog, but it felt like much longer. In the last few weeks I have crashed a car, missed a flight, driven until 2 in the morning twice, scraped roadkill off the highway with a broken piece of a reflector post, been on a relationship building boot-pack, received an awesome haircut, mailed someone a box containing exactly three pine cones and played a one-time-only acoustic cover of "Call Me Maybe". But not only has the moment for blogging about those escapades passed, if I put those stories in the internet I'll have nothing to talk about with anyone who sees me in person.

In fact, I'm only writing this post to explain an even longer break in posting which is about to begin. I am now back in Canberra where I will settle down to something that approximates a real life in what many people think of as the real world. Many people have said that I've been living the dream. While it's true that my time in the hills has been generally awesome, coming back to Canberra feels more like going to sleep than waking up. But if I am going to sleep here it's just a peaceful beauty sleep. So when I eventually leave town again, with my complexion clear and composed, hopefully the blog will spring back to life. The alternative is to regularly email my parents, which I have not been very good at so far.

Thanks to all the folks I met along the way. In Rossland there's my winter family, Robbi, Fleur and Maud, plus the rest of the folks I skied and hiked and hung out with; my artistic collaborator, Brad, and my wealthy patron German Anna; my unnaturally patient boss Brian, as well as Chris, Colin and Vickie at Powderhound. Thanks also to the generous and always motivated Ward in Penticton and all the other folks who shared some rope time with me at Skaha - it was vastly better than soloing. In New Zealand there's Barrett, Lindsay, Caroline, Dan, Doug and Irene (who aren't actually in NZ anymore), Dee, Eric, and Lee. Sorry I had to leave early - I hope you're slaying the pow for me in this latest storm and saving the best for last at Broken River. Thanks also to Joe for showing me around some new terrain at BR and Olympus, and for taking some cool photos. I'll see most of you guys again early in the new year. Stay in touch.

The Magical River of Food. Or, why I am nauseous every night

I have been a dirtbag for many months now. It depends on how you measure true dirtbaggery, but it was certainly underway when I was in New Zealand in July of last year. If you count the time I spent living in Canberra housesitting and bumming and not paying rent then it goes back to August of 2010, but I had a job back then so I guess that's ruled out. Anyway, it's been a long time. In fact, looking back at my life, you could probably say I've been a dirtbag since high school in 2001 with a brief interruption of full-time paid work in 2010-11.

This fine pedigree of dubious living has ingrained in me certain habits that are fundamental to my identity and personality: A refusal to wash my hair, a loathing of paid work, a willingness to eat out of bins, the ability to sleep fully dressed on the floor of a busy room, an abiding suspicion of soap, etc. But the most powerful of these habits relates to food, and specifically free food. When there is free food I am compelled, like a gospel author guided by the divine will, to eat it all.

Generally in the life of a dirtbag this is a healthy habit. Free food is usually scarce enough and paying for food usually distasteful enough that eating all the free food you can find makes for a varied, unpredictable and passably healthy diet. But there are times when free food becomes abundant, and during those times it can be difficult, even impossible, to exercise restraint.

Life at Broken River at the moment is one of those times. I have, through an almost obsessive-compulsive commitment to parasitism, managed to finagle free food and lodging in exchange for volunteer work. This food comes in the form of dinners which are prepared (occasionally by me) at one of the lodges, and which I have come to think of as a magical river of food. At around 7pm each night, a certain bench in the designated lodge is covered first with soup, then with some kind of hearty main course, and then with a dessert. Usually there is a lot of food. Invariably it is free.

And so I eat. Dear lord, how I eat. At the time I make all kinds of excuses to myself, like "This meal is high in fresh vegetables," or "My, that serving spoon was larger than I thought," but each night it is the same. I eat a great deal of soup and roughly twice as much main course as is sensible, whereupon I feel uncomfortably full.

At this point the rational part of my brain that I rely on for talking to police officers and customs officials kicks in and I resolve not to eat dessert. But I am not so deluded as to believe that I actually a rational agent, and within a few minutes I always find that I have unconsciously piloted my body through the dessert gathering process like some kind of meat robot. Of course, once I have collected the dessert, I feel uncomfortable letting it go to waste, so I push through, tak

OH MY GOD, MY SCREEN IS FLICKERING SO BADLY I NEED TO TAKE A SHORT BREAK AND CRUSH MY EYEBALLS INTO MY HEAD.

OK, the screen on my poor broken laptop is still flickering like a strobe light from some kind of office-job hell, but I'll push on.

Anyway, I was saying that I eat a large serving of dessert that I had previously committed not to eat, taking me from mere discomfort to outright nausea. Despite my best efforts, this process repeats every night.

To make matters worse, the staff all encourage me to keep eating. Indeed, they encourage me to go to dinner in the first place. And in a sense, they are doing me a huge favour. The more food I eat at BR the less often I have to go to town, and since I no longer have a car (a story for another day), that is a huge bonus. Plus, I suspect they see me as some kind of strange starving vagrant urchin child, and by feeding my they keep me from subsisting on moss, leaves and pine cones. Leaving aside for the moment the fact that this perception is largely true, and that the forest in this area is devoid of pine cones, this situation is startlingly reminiscent of aid programs in developing nations. Everyone has good intentions, but a mix of cultural misunderstandings, circumstances and corruption (of my stunted and malformed soul) mean that instead of receiving a nutritious meal to subsist upon I leave feeling bloated, ill, and flushed with self loathing.

All this is made slightly more awkward by the fact that the staff will read this entry, so hello staff. As an aside, the expression "ticket tart" which I used (by in no way invented or coined) way back in July has been adopted for semi official use here. I feel at once proud and sheepish.

And yes, I'll try to post more. Things have been vaguely happening, and I should write about them, but I'm  busy with the eating and the feeling gross and the skiing and all that stuff. Also, it's just a matter of time until this laptop gives me seizures, so I'm trying to cut back on internet use.

I Have an Awesome Towel

I usually try not to toot my own horn, but I think it is fair to say that I own the greatest towel in the world.

Like an alcoholic who cannot hold down a steady job, for many years I have been unable to hold down a steady towel. During the last 12 months alone I’ve been through 3 or 4 towels simply because I leave them behind when I change towns, or in one notable case because I used my towel to mop up spilled wine and it became infested with slivers of broken glass.

Even before I ascended to genuine dirtbaggery I struggled with towel ownership. Back in Canberra I didn’t even own a towel, I just used other people’s. But when I went to Walmart early this year to buy more underpants, something incredible happened. I was about to make an impulse purchase of a regular, monochrome, rectangular towel when my housemate intervened. She had found a towel that had a hood in the middle and could be worn like a poncho. Better yet, when you put the towel on in poncho form you were magically transformed into a tableau of a octopus, sporting a dashing polka-dot bow-tie, adrift in an azure sea. It was slightly more expensive, and typically I am a pretty stingy person, but I decided this was not the time to let a few extra dollars stand in the way of a good idea. The folks at Walmart were all suitably impressed when I chose to wear my towel out of the store and through the car-park.

Because my towel is so excruciatingly fantastic I have made sure to hang on to it through my bumbling travels in the last few months. It has been my most faithful towel ever, and we are looking forward to a long and happy life together for as long as the fabric will last. But owning such an amazing thing comes at a terrible price. Members of the staff at Broken River have begun to covet my towel, and in the absence of anything meaningful to do with their lives they have started plotting to steal my towel. In response to this, I have been forced to hide it after twice having to race from one hut to another to prevent its theft.

In the past, I would have simply revealed my diabolical hiding place to the internet and trusted the obscurity of this blog to ensure that the information never made it back to the staff here, but now that people around here actually check this blog, the location must remain secret.

The issue reached a head last night after a particularly intense altercation. One staff member stole my towel from its hanger and tried to escape White Star Chalet. I was able to dodge past another staff member who was trying to delay me on the track between the huts and snatch my towel back before the thief could make it out the door. To top matters off, neither the thief nor his two accomplices removed their boots before entering the hut. I figured the safest thing to do was to wear the towel in poncho form, at which the thief (by now slightly inebriated) tried to manhandle it from my body. The dastardly trio only left when their boss dropped in. At the time I was convinced this was simply another ploy to steal the towel, and I conducted our ensuing conversation wearing the towel and clutching at it to ensure that no one tried to make a sneak attack. It turns out that he had no idea what was going on, and in retrospect my actions may have made me look a little weird.

The biggest problem I face now in keeping my towel safe is getting it dry after using it. At this very moment, the towel is actually hanging up in a completely stealable place and is not at all hidden, but I’m keeping an eye on the staff to ensure they don’t go nicking it. Once it’s dry I’ll return it to its hiding place, but if it goes into hiding too early it will get mouldy.

But seriously people, this towel is regularly used to dry my junk. I cannot for the life of me understand why other people would want to steal it. Apart from the fact that it’s awesome. But other than that, eww...

The Chosen Onesie

I mentioned a few posts back that I have been trying out some new ski gear here at Broken River. Today I would like to introduce you to the most daunting and serious item of clothing I have ever worn. Around Broken River, it is known simply as “The Onesie”.

In my experience, the best things in life are rarely encountered as the result of any kind of deliberate search. Instead, greatness occurs when you put yourself in a position where it can find you. So it was with The Onesie, which came to me through a staff member at BR. Somehow we ended up discussing retro day at Red Mountain, and she claimed to have a onesie more awesome than both of the outfits I wore that day. I must admit that I passed this off as idle banter – everyone claims their onesie is the best. I was more than a little surprised when she delivered The Onesie in all its faded blue glory. I could tell straight away that this was no ordinary ski suit. It was, somehow, different. More...

Rad.

I tried it on and found that it fit like a glove. Snug around the thighs, ample in the shoulder and bust. Long enough through the body to not squash my man-parts, but not so long that the crotch prevented me from walking normally. Sleeve length, perfect. Legs tapered, but tastefully so. This was no mere fashion piece made to adorn an après ski bar or catch the eye in a cafe. This onesie was made for a real skier, for big mountains and epic runs. Wearing it I felt stronger, faster, more inclined to jump off things.

But there was something more. This onesie promised greatness, but beneath the incoming tide of confidence and control was a surging rip of fear. The Onesie demanded great skiing. It would not be content with mere tootling down the main basin, or cruising through the open bowls of Allan’s Basin. The onesie hungered for glory, and if I was to wear it, I had to deliver.

A crowd grew and thronged around me in White Star Chalet. They demanded to know: Who was I, where had I found The Onesie, would I wear it tomorrow? But I was daunted by the burden of expectation. Was I ready to don The Onesie? Could I satisfy its desires? Could I do it justice? I dodged their questions, took off The Onesie and made excuses.

I slept fitfully that night, tortured by visions of blue nylon, tight chutes, and big drops. As I sweated in my sleeping bag, the cold light of the moon cast through the windows of the hut and lit upon the onesie crumpled beside my bed. The fluoro pink highlights on the sleeves took on an eerie glow. I shuddered and turned my face towards the wall.

When the sun finally rose the next morning, it was the day after the day after a big storm. There were still plenty of fresh lines to be found and things to be jumped off. The snow would be powder, but stiff and heavy – perfect for skiing aggressively. But after the rigours of the previous day’s skiing, I wasn’t sure whether I could handle another hard day on the hill. I looked long and hard at The Onesie lying by my bed, but I didn’t have the courage to put it on. Sighing, I stuffed it into the bottom of my pack, threw on my normal ski gear and headed for the lifts.

In my first run, I tried a few jumps and stuck the landings. On my second, I opened up my turns and put on some speed. By the time I reached the bottom I was ready. I returned to the day lodge, stripped down to my inappropriately tight and hole-ridden thermal pants, and climbed into The Onesie. At once I felt the heady rush of power and expectation. I put Kanye West’s All Of the Lights on endless repeat, cranked up the volume, pulled down my goggles and got rad.

The rest of the day is a blur. I remember skiing lines I’d never had the courage to ski before, jumping off everything from medium sized rocks to small children and skied as fast and as hard as I could. At some stage I bumped into BR local, ski writer and photographer Joe Harrison who was also seduced by the power of The Onesie. He showed me some new chutes and got a few shots of The Onesie in action.

Picture courtesy of Joe Harrison. Don't go stealing it. Even if it is awesome.

I did everything that I could to satisfy The Onesie, and I probably skied better than I ever have before, and yet it still wasn’t enough. The Onesie knew what it wanted, but I couldn’t deliver. Again and again I stood below a line called “Ten to Five”, a tight chute that leads to a straight line exit with a mandatory cliff. The Onesie whispered constantly for succor. It wanted to ski the line, but I was too scared. Mostly because skiing that line would break lots of my bones and generally hurt a very large amount.

At the end of the day I returned to White Star, exhausted. Despite making a respectable effort wearing the ski suit, I had by no means satiated its infernal appetite. But I haven’t put The Onesie away. It sits in the corner of White Star on an unused bunk, waiting for the day when I’m ready to ski the line of death. And when conditions are right, and I’m more rad, I will put the onesie on and complete my end of the bargain.