Categories
2021–2022 Aspen Mountain

A Little Place Called Aspen

My favorite movie will always be Dumb & Dumber, which is a comedy starring Jim Carrey (as Lloyd Christmas) and Jeff Daniels (as Harry Dunne) as two half-wits who drive from Rhode Island to Aspen, Colorado, to deliver a briefcase to a woman who had left it in the lobby of an airport. Lloyd was her airport limousine driver, and he had developed a crush on her at first sight. (“Why you going to the airport? Flying somewhere?” was his first attempt at flirting with her.) Lloyd had no idea he had taken a briefcase full of ransom money left for the kidnappers of the woman’s husband.

I remember seeing the movie in the theater with a friend while I was in junior high school—the perfect age to be enraptured by a movie full of sophomoric humor. My friend and I had each smuggled a can of Coca-Cola into the theater. I remember not being able to keep a sip down because of all the laughing.

At the beginning of the movie, Harry and Lloyd were lamenting that they had both been fired from their jobs that day when Lloyd announces: “We’ve gotta get out of this town!”

“And go where? Where we gonna go?”

“I’ll tell you where,” Lloyd assures Harry. “Someplace warm. A place where the beer flows like wine. Where beautiful women instinctively flock like the salmon of Capistrano. I’m talking about a little place called Assspen.”

The scene from Dumb & Dumber that gave this ski day report its name

Since seeing that movie as a teenager, I’ve always wanted to make my own (less idiotic) pilgrimage to Aspen. So, when my friend Mark invited me to join him and his seven-year-old son skiing there, I quickly said yes.

Categories
2019–2020 Alta Snowbird

Riding All the Lifts

Returning from last season’s calf and knee injuries has been more difficult mentally than I anticipated. Most days I just don’t have it. I’m not even sure what it is, but I often find myself fearful on trails and terrain that have never posed a challenge in the past.

But I keep skiing. And I keep struggling.

I thought of different ways to challenge myself and to keep things interesting. I went to resorts I had never skied before (despite living nearby for over a decade), including Park City and Deer Valley. (I’m also planning to ski Solitude for the first time next week.)

This week, I decided to ski from every lift at Alta and Snowbird, which seemed like a fun gimmick to try. I have an Alta-Snowbird season pass; I figured I should take full advantage of it at least once.