Blake in Butte: Not Butte, But Beautiful

Thursday, January 14, 2016

Not Butte, But Beautiful

So, this video is from the opposite side of Colorado than Crested Butte, but I'm sharing it here for two reasons: 1. Because my friend and colleague, Jerry, is taking a long weekend back country skiing with Steamboat Powdercats (I would never speak to him, again, if I weren't heading to Crusty Butt in a month),

... and 2: It features my favorite track from the very first album I bought with my own allowance: Van Halen: Women and Children First.

Still trying to get the old legs and lungs in shape. It's a work in progress. I feel a difference, even if the scale doesn't.

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Introduction

First, a little context. It's not unusual for an upstate New York boy to love skiing, but my love is an obsessive love, and when most 14-year-old boys hid under the covers with a flashlight and the bra section of the Sears catalog, or worse, I had brochures and trail maps to exotic ski resorts, memorizing every line, curve, and splash of lacy powder...the heaving swell of pendulous moguls...ahem... Skiing was my adolescent passion, and I skied nearly everywhere east of the Cuyahoga, mostly in New York and Vermont. However, my constant dream was to ski out west, or in the Alps. I never went, and before I knew it, I was married to a Kentucky Girl who "hated all things cold and fast." Besides being broke in grad school, having small children, two ACL surgeries, living on teachers' salaries, and living astride the Manson/Nixon Line, this dream seemed destined to die. No, Perfect North doesn't count. As a result, I've had one bucket list item, ONE, since early adolescence. I've traveled the country, Lived in Europe, busked on the Rive Gauche, played music with Grammy winners, raised two fabulous kids, but I've never lost the teenage dream (tm) of making turns in the Rockies. My longing was almost a point of pride, and an annoyingly frequent lament. Now, with my birthday gift of a long weekend in Crested Butte, Colorado, this February, my wife, Krista, has offered to fulfill yet another dream. Since my birthday, I've been that 14 year old kid, again, this time with the internet at my disposal to feed my excitement.Cool side note? I get to share all of this with my super-cool brother, Geoff. Boom!