Skiing with JT

Hey JT!

       Was it 10 years ago when our fraternity class all had dinner in Menlo Park?  I remember that night like it was yesterday.  I sat next to your old buddy Vern Taylor and we talked up a storm about everything from cabbages to kings (Nat King Cole reference...).  He was excited to tell me about a guy named Sam Harris who had written a book called "The End of Faith".  I had read the review in the New Yorker and I agreed with his position.  His big question:  "Why are our leaders taking advice from a carpenter who lived two thousand years ago?  Do we really believe the laws of physics were suspended back then allowing someone to walk on water?  Bring the dead back to life?  Multiply loaves and fishes?  To say nothing of his Dad turning reluctant wives into pillars of salt and speaking from a burning bush"  We both spent the night in what I like to call "heated agreement".

  You had shaved your head and said you loved rum and we had a wonderful hug at the end of the night amidst fellow DU's and spouses snapping pictures like mad.  None of which I ever got to see.  (C'est la vie).  I'm reminded of our fast friendship from freshman year, you with your contact lenses (remember when you had to go to the doctor after you slept with them on and he found one on the top of your eyeball?)  You were dating some girl and you set me up with her friend.  That was the glorious night I lost my virginity.  Pam...you never forget your first girl, do you?  It was her first time too.  We went at it off and on pretty much all night.  In the morning you came in to my dorm room and while Pam slept I told you what happened and my concerns about the possibility of pregnancy.  It turns out she wasn’t really sleeping.  I got into trouble for that little kiss and tell faux pas...  But we made up quickly enough.  We were both hot to trot some more.  

Other memories of you:

The trips in your Porsche with the eight-track player and you smoking your damn Marlboro’s.  I never told you this but I hated it when you lit up.  Then there was the time we rode cross country in the snow, most of the way, to your house in Littleton, Colorado at Christmas when we helped your dad build a fence in zero degree weather followed by the trip to Vail for my first ski adventure.  You drove us in that little Porsche with the rag top.  I was sure we were going to eat it on that winding little road with ice on the road and the wind blowing snow all around till we could hardly see.  At one point you said "Relax Stevens.  This is the easy part.  We still have to get over Loveland pass.  It's at about 12,000 feet."  Somehow, with me cringing and praying in the little cramped passenger seat, we made it to the family ski cabin.

       As a kid from Hawaii, I hadn't every experienced snow before that trip.  I ran around in the snow in my bare feet until Vern took me in hand and put me on the back of his skis to schuss me down the hill to take my lumps on the bunny trail.  I was terrified standing behind Vern.  One hand holding my skis and poles the other rapped tightly around Vern's waist.  Before the two of you took off to conquer the back bowls, you told me to stay on the bunny hill (50 cents!) and herring bone back up the hill after each run.  As you and Vern were skiing off you called out over your shoulder,  "You'll be fine Mike!  You're a surfer;  You'll figure it out!"

It was on my first run that I "figured out" that you turn from the back of the skis instead of the front like in surfing.  Unfortunately, I didn’t figure that out until I ran over some poor lady slowly snow plowing down the hill.

      Vern had outfitted me since we were the same size.  He loaned me an old parka and his old skis that were very long (216 centimeters...today 185 cm is long) and fast downhill racing skis.  I had some old leather boots my brother had bequeathed me.  Vern’s skis had long thong bindings which ski racers prefer so your bindings don’t release.  “Great!”  I’m thinking to myself,  “If I don’t die running into a tree I’ll probably break a leg because the bindings don’t release”.  By the third herring bone up the hill, I had to take my parka off I was so hot.  As I did so, a huge plume of steam rose from my chest.  What a fool!  Here I am thinking skiing is a cold weather sport...

I ease-dropped on an instructor who had a beginner’s class with him and followed his advice about the hip swaying, the pole planting and keeping your weight downhill.  It was counter-intuitive advice.  As a beginner, you’re fearful of what’s down below you and you naturally lean uphill to avoid falling downhill where you might slide into something or someone causing you both misery and humiliation.  By the end of the that first day I had advanced to beginner-intermediate “stem skier”.  Snow plow the turns then put skis together for the straight-aways.

Next you and Vern took me into the back bowls to experience powder skiing.  I remember what a heavenly feeling it was...right up to when I lost my balance and ended up a human snowball.  It took me about twenty minutes to dig myself out, brush myself off and head on down the hill.  I was in awe of you and Vern’s skiing.  Vern later told me how his family would import a European ski instructor to live with them in their “cabin” during the ski season. (actually a beautiful stone mini-mansion with five or six bedrooms.  We went to dinner there one night and we had to wear coats and ties.  They had a maid and a butler to serve us.  They looked like they could have been the upstairs help from "Downton Abbey", except they were black...).  When Vern would go out with the instructor he would give Vern a sock and he had to keep it wedged between his boots.  That’s how he learned to keep his skis together.  If he lost the sock he had to herring bone back up the hill to get it.

           Remember when you were dating Stevie Nicks senior year?  You brought her to a party we had at our house off campus; "Big Pink".  We all drank and smoked ourselves into a jolly state.  Someone put Crosby Still and Nash on the victrola and Stevie Nicks and I started singing the harmony parts.  At the end of the party, as she was walking out the front door with you, she turned to me and with a sly wink said; "Hey, Mike...you sing good!"

    

Anyway...Thanks Johnny T. for all the good memories.  Mickey da Mayor of Happy Acres

A COUPLE OF SKI BUNNIES GETTING READY FOR SOME SERIOUS SCHUSSING... circa 1967 or so