1/25/15
Scarsdale, New York
“Your problem is you think too much.”
It was the best advice I had ever received in my life. It is advice I have only truly been embracing
since the New Year, despite having heard it in, I think, 2007. Almost everything that has gone wrong in my
life over the past, well, decade, hell, since the turn of the millennium even,
has been a result of overthinking things.
However, shutting down an active as a mind as mine is no easier than
telling my heart to stop beating. “Eff
it.” That is the most powerful tool I
have against overthinking things. It was
with that in mind that I proceeded down Ripsaw this morning, and, guess
what? Nothing bad happened. The funniest thing about that advice. It was never given to me. It was a phone conversation with my shrink,
and what he had really said was, “Your problem is you drink too much.”
No, that was not my problem at NYU. Alcohol was not the temptation. Alcohol was boring. I had had ready access to alcohol at my
parents’ house as long as I could remember.
No, socialization was the temptation.
That was my undoing. The reason I
was staying up until 3 AM every night was to socialize, not to drink. The reason I stopped going to class was not
because I was hungover. It was because I
was overthinking it. It was the reason
it took me until after graduation to ask out my high school crush, despite
having fallen in love with her in the tenth grade. I fell in love with her in January of 2004,
or so I believed. I didn’t know what
love was then. Maybe I still don’t. It was not until January of 2014, a decade
later, that I truly was over her.
Alright, this better belongs in my personal journal.
The title of tonight’s entry is going to be “Ripsaw.” I could have spent all day riding that chair
lift, looking at the run, overthinking it.
I knew one thing. I was not going
home until I skied Ripsaw. It was the
only double black on the whole mountain, and I needed to do it, even if I slid
down the whole way. I needed to stop
overthinking it and say, “Eff it.” In
the end, that was exactly what I did, but I have gotten ahead of myself. We waited until SNL was over before going to
sleep, and I think it was the first episode I have seen all season, with the
possible exception of the Christmas special.
Blake Shelton did an excellent job as host.
I overslept a bit, waking up after 8 AM, and
we were on the road a little after 9 AM, I think. Pablo had said that he wanted to stop at a
Starbucks, but I had no idea where to find a Starbucks. It was going to be a tight schedule, since I
wanted to hit all the trails on the South Peak, stop at my aunt’s in Brookline
to say hello, and get to Scarsdale by 8 PM for the SAG Awards. In the end, from the time I put my skis on to
the time I took them off was only two hours, but I hit Ripsaw, and that was
what mattered.
I wanted to stop at
Flapjack’s for breakfast, and I didn’t feel right about leaving Pablo in the car
while I ate breakfast, so I said that I would buy him his coffee if he wanted
to come in with me. I parked, and he was
sound asleep. I asked if he wanted to
come in. No, he opted to wait in the car
while I had my breakfast. Fine by
me. Flapjack’s was the number two rated
restaurant in town on Tripadvisor. The
place where I had dinner last night was number one. This place was just as crowded, but the line
moved quickly enough. I ordered coffee
and the “hungry bear”: two eggs sunny side up, two strips of crispy bacon, two
blueberry pancakes, and home fries. At
the side of the table was a bottle of local maple syrup. I proceeded to eat the entire meal with
chopsticks just so that I could tell Vanessa about it.
I wonder if her parents are still reading these. I don’t care.
Now that I have some distance from the trip, I have realized that she is
the person from the ship that I love most.
She truly was like the big sister I always wanted. I’m not entirely sure how or why or when I
developed those feelings for her, but every time I sat down next to her in a
comfortable silence, I was happy. She is
the person from the ship I have communicated with the most since getting back
home, and the reply I got from her to my picture of the breakfast with
chopsticks made my day. The only other people
who can make me so happy with one message are the three people I mentioned in
my Day 0 entry.
After breakfast, we
headed to the main mountain so that I could get my pins and pick up my
skis. We then headed to the South
Peak. I asked about Ripsaw on the way
up, and I was told that it’s just the icy shelf at the beginning that is hard,
the rest being pretty easy.
Seriously? 90% of a double black
being “pretty easy?” There were really
only four distinct runs down, two blues, a black, and the double. I lit up a Montecristo and started with one
of the blues. I thought about just
saying “eff it” and doing Ripsaw, but I also thought my driving analogy. When I ski, I usually fall during the easier
parts, when I’m not paying attention, when I go to fix my glove or glasses,
when I break form. The two worst car
accidents I ever had were not because I was going too fast. They were because I was not paying attention,
because I went to grab something and lost focus. I wanted to ski the blue with perfect form
before I tried the double. I had
complete faith in my ability to ski any groomed trail in New England if I kept
in good form.
I went back up, and it was
time for Ripsaw. I got to the shelf and
proceeded to skid on the ice and fall on my side. It wasn’t so much a fall as it was an issue
of just leaning too much compared to the steepness of the trip. I literally had the sensation of the mountain
coming up to meet me. I got up in
seconds and did the rest of the shelf with no problem at all. After the shelf, there was a stretch that was
comparable to a black. The rest was like
a blue. I kept in perfect form the whole
time, and I was fine. I ditched my cigar
and want back up. It was time to do the
black, Twitcher. I lit up my OpusX and
headed down. As a whole, it was harder
than Ripsaw, but I stayed in form, and I was fine. I went back up again and did the other blue,
ditching my cigar as I went to pick up Pablo.
We were well ahead of schedule, but my legs were hurting, so I didn’t
want to do another run. I dropped off my
rentals, and then I dropped him off at McDonald’s. I gassed up the car and went to White
Mountain Bagel Company, the number six rated restaurant, to get a coffee and
bagel with lox spread. Maybe it was
because the bagels were no longer fresh after noon, but it sure as hell was not
worth the carbs. I picked up Pablo, and
we hit the road, heading towards my aunt’s house. I gave the E.P. Carrillo another chance, and
I was pleasantly surprised. It was an
exceptional cigar, but I still don’t think it was worthy of the rating. We listed to Avril Lavigne’s eponymous 2013
album, going through two loops before we arrived.
We sat down and chatted with her for an
hour. I had always known that she was an
exceptionally intelligent woman, but it wasn’t until this afternoon that I
realized that she was one of the smartest people I know. When I say “one of,” I mean top ten, easy,
maybe top five. I think the impetus for
that realization came when I made a joke about some random topic that almost
anyone else would have needed about six levels of explanation. She got the joke instantly. She found a common ground with Pablo,
surprisingly being well-versed in Bolivian politics. We made fun of her stepmother’s (my
grandfather’s wife’s) “No blacks in Boston” theory, and she offered to show us
plenty of black people if we were so inclined.
We also talked about “Deflategate,” and I explained the theory of them
having inflated the balls in the sauna.
Returning to the topic of my aunt’s intelligence, I realized that the
mark of someone’s intelligence is not whether or not they can understand the
Ideal Gas Law. There are plenty of
people who, upon hearing that theory, could have instantly replied, “Right,
PV=nRT.” That doesn’t make them
smart. That just means they remembered
their high school chemistry. I stayed as
long as I possibly could while still being assured of getting home in time for
the SAG Awards.
I put on Red, smoking a
Santana while we listened. Almost as
soon as were on the highway, Pablo said that he had to U. I told him that I would pull over so that we
could make it Official. He didn’t want
to do that. We wound up having to stop
at a rest plaza. I pulled over right by
the entrance. From the time he got out
of the car to the time he got back in took 8 minutes. I was pissed, no pun intended. It should not have taken more than 2
minutes. Including the time to enter and
exit the plaza, the whole process probably took 10 minutes, 10 minutes that we
didn’t have. After the album finished, I
pulled over so that I could take a U, making it Official. I also needed to get an Avo from the trunk,
since I wanted to listen to Les Miz. The
whole process took my about 2 minutes, 3 minutes if you include the time it took
to pull over.
We made great time, getting
to the rental place at 7:32 PM, the album finishing as we were getting our
stuff out of the car. We made a quick
transfer and were home well before the ceremony started. I went upstairs to change, and then I saw
it. Disaster. My US/CAN WHS souvenirs were all messed
up. The cleaning ladies had just shoved
all of the souvenirs, messing up the perfect order I had for them. It wasn’t even like they were dusting them or
anything. The souvenirs were still
dusty. It was just all pushed together. I was furious. What was to be done? My mother said that she would help me fix it
later, trying to attribute my anger to hunger.
My readers know me well enough to know that, when I’m hungry, I have a
tendency to feel negative emotions. No,
this was genuine anger, not hunger.
These are my most value possessions, excluding documents, and, if any
one of them were damaged, nothing less than a trip to the location to replace
it would do, and, even then, it would not be the same. Of my 17 goals, every US WHS is the highest
of the goals, and I collect a special souvenir from each one. Each souvenir is irreplaceable.
We went down for dinner, my mother having ordered
20 wings for each of us, along with some waffle fries, from Candlelight. I wonder where Candlelight falls on the
Tripadvisor rankings for Scarsdale. Yep,
it’s the number one ranking, not surprised.
We watched the awards and then fixed the souvenirs. Afterwads, I lit up an Ardor (and then
another Ardor) and proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close so
that I publish it and get some sleep. Next
stop: I have no fucking idea. Maybe New
Mexico to get three more souvenirs for the dresser? I was thinking of going somewhere the weekend
of 2/7, though.
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