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Ski Season Approaches!

August 31, 2010 – 7:39 pm

I know it’s only August, but this afternoon I found myself thinking that skiing is… sorta… right around the corner.  Metaphorically speaking.

The guy at the right is my role model.  Klaus Obermeyer, founder and scion of the family business that makes and sells good-quality, fairly-priced ski duds.  Klaus skis every day of the season (sans helmet) with a big smile on his face, and I can only hope that I’m in as good a shape as he is when I’m 80-whatever.

I was playing golf with a guy today who plays golf almost every day, because his back and his knees aren’t good enough to allow him to ski anymore.  So he said that he “basically suffers through 7 months of winter” each year.

I can’t imagine living where I do, and not being able to ski.  So for today, and hopefully for a very long time, all I can say is:

THANK GOD I’VE STILL GOT TWO GOOD KNEES!

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More Snow!

April 29, 2010 – 8:19 am

Well, we had a week or so of pretty decent (40′s to 50′s) dry weather, but now we’re back to powder days again.  Springtime on the Rockies.

I actually managed to get myself out to the golf course a couple of times, even played two holes once.

Then we awoke to a new 12 inches in the driveway.  There’s probably twice that atop Aspen Mountain.  I’ll have to get up there and find out.

For the time being, all I can say is:

THANK GOD I GOT A BUNCH OF YARDWORK IN BEFORE ALL THIS SHOWED UP!

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Self-inflicted Injuries

March 2, 2010 – 9:21 am

Just ran into a neighbor whose 15-year-old broke his humerus yesterday, skiing.  And tomorrow is the annual school ski day.  Where everybody goes skiing.

She said that, already, the kid (Ian) has heard so many broken-humerus stories that he doesn’t feel all that bad.

(I told his mom my broken-humerus story:  After I’d been in rehab 5 weeks, my therapist tested my reactions by throwing a tennis ball at me from 20 feet.  All different directions: up, down, across my body, etc.  And he said, “If you miss even one, you’re not cleared to go skiing.”

(And when we were done, and I passed, I asked him if anybody ever misses one.  And he smiled and said, “Nope.”)

Anyway, to put things in perspective, I mentioned to Ian’s mom that we could be living in the inner city, and be worried about our kids getting shot.

So look at it that way:

THANK GOD WE LIVE IN A PLACE WHERE OUR BIGGEST DANGER IS OURSELVES!

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TOYOTA~thon

February 2, 2010 – 4:18 pm

I’m not that much of a “car enthusiast.”  My family owns three, but we use them to just get from place to place, not to have fun.

But I was up early this morning, and so I turned on the TV and caught not one, but three different news reports on Toyota’s accelerator-pedal/recall dilemma.  Including one about a man who died simply pulling into a parking lot (when the car zoomed out of control and hit a wall).

It’s times like these when all you can say is:

THANK GOD I DON’T OWN A TOYOTA!

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Winter X Games

January 29, 2010 – 12:53 pm

Once again, the ESPN Winter X Games are upon us.

The weather’s milder this year than it has been in the past, which is a blessing, I guess.  (We could always use more snow.)

I heard a radio interview with a competitor a few years ago, the day before he was going to attempt the first-ever complete back flip (360 degrees, vertical) on a snowmobile.

He said that the intriguing thing was that you really couldn’t practice it.  You just had to go out and do it.  Yikes!

He managed to pull it off, the next day.

But he also said that he’d spent 7 of the last 12 months in the hospital, with various injuries.

Which made me think:

THANK GOD I DON’T HAVE TO DO THIS FOR A LIVING!

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Lest we forget…

January 1, 2010 – 12:08 pm

New Year’s is the time for making new resolutions.  It should also be the time to remember the past, and put things into perspective.

Last New Year’s Eve, all of downtown Aspen (which is, admittedly, only about 8 blocks long and 4 blocks wide) was roped off– quarantined– because of a bomb scare.  And in these terrorist-riddled days, the police can’t be too complacent.

So New Year’s Eve partying was confined to the non-commercial venues.  I.e., people’s houses.  (One of my kids thought that maybe we should spend the night with friends out in Snowmass, as if the Aspen “metro” area was potentially about to be engulfed in a mushroom cloud a la Hiroshima/Nagasaki.

And as it turned out, the bomb threat had been called in not by some crazed muslim, but by a crazed Aspenite.  Long-time Aspenite, with full Aspen-crazy pedigree.  (Who killed himself, shortly thereafter.)

Makes you rue the loss of “the good old days.”

As my 15-year-old likes to say: “Just joking.”

At least we can say:

THANK GOD WE GOT THROUGH A NEW YEAR’S WITHOUT ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE GOD-AWFUL-FOR-BUSINESS BOMB THREATS!

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It’s always something…

December 29, 2009 – 5:52 pm

Christmas in Aspen.

It seems like just about every year some blame fool or other decides that he’s gotta make himself unhappy for the holidays.

At least this time there were no guns involved.  Just a switchblade.  (Who doesn’t travel without a switchblade these days?)

I know that Hollywood publicists insist that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but serious jail time’s gotta trump simply being out of the limelight for a week or two.

Whatever happened to just being happy, with friends and family?

My favorite, from many years ago, was when the Caribou Club instituted a 2-bodyguards-per-person rule for the holidays.  Seemed that the club was getting a little too cramped with folks having too big of an entourage.  Especially when the bodyguards are packing serious sidearms.

All I can say is:

THANK GOD I DON’T HANG OUT WITH THOSE KINDS OF PEOPLE!

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Westward Ho!

December 22, 2009 – 10:11 am

Christmas-time in Aspen.  And some people will go to any length to get here.

What with the (not unanticipated) bad weather in various parts of the country, holiday traveling is once again proving difficult.  Driving sucks; airports are jammed.  But somehow anybody who wants to get here manages to pull it off.  It happens every year.

One downside for the kids, of course, is that some of their friends wind up going somewhere else for the holidays, so they’ve got fewer friends to hang out with.  But everybody survives.  And we all get to go skiing!  It might be more crowded than normal, but the snow’s just as good!

It’s supposed to snow a bit, today and tomorrow.  Maybe not epic proportions, but 6-10 inches is always welcome.  It’ll put a little bit more a smile on everyone’s faces.

And when the new year arrives, sooner or later everyone will manage to get back home, too.

As for me, all I have to say is:

THANK GOD I DON’T HAVE TO GO ANYWHERE!

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General Heathen, indeed!

December 20, 2009 – 9:44 am

My wife’s off this morning to be a “greeter” at our local episcopal church.  Not being a believer, myself,  I don’t have to go with her.

We were joking, this morning in bed, about how some folks there must think that she’s a widow, or a divorcee.

For no apparent reason, that reminded me of an old joke:

The minister for a church one day up and absconds with all the church funds.  Every penny. He just vanishes.  So the church elders choose a trusted church member to go out and find him.  Bring him back, if possible.  At least recover the money.

So a year later, the trusted church member returns, looking pretty beat-up and bedraggled.  He reports that he did, indeed, find the scoundrel.  He’d been in Las Vegas all this time.

And what had he done with all the money? the church elders wanted to know.

And the trusted church member, somewhat sheepishly, replied, “Well, some of it he spent on gambling, and some of it went to drink and drugs, and a lot of it he spent on wild women…”

“And…?” the elders prompted.

“… And…” the trusted church member stuttered, “… and the rest of it, I guess, he just squandered.”

Anyway, I don’t know who that guy in the photo is, but you’ve gotta admire a man who stands up for his convictions!

Or do you?

All I can say is:

THANK GOD I’M NOT ONE OF THOSE!

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“I hate your boyfriend!”

December 19, 2009 – 6:15 pm

WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOU DETEST YOUR BEST FRIEND’S BOYFRIEND?

Boy, that’s a toughie.  (But at least it’s better than your best friend’s husband.  In theory, at least, a boyfriend is temporary.)

Fortunately, this isn’t my problem.  It’s my daughter’s.

But my initial answer was, upon reflection, probably as good as any I’d ever come up with:

THANK GOD HE’S NOT YOURS!!

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