When did you "throw in the towel"?

[DBdude]

Ha


Sent from my iPhone using TGR Forums

[jono]

It's just about being there and being good. Be there, be good. Make friends and take care of each other.

Yup. I glossed over the details a bit, partly because OP might have a different set of expectations or feel he's missing some specific thing, but that pretty well describes the way it goes down if you're doing it right, I think. Seems to be true whether you're helping someone move or performing a professional service.

[Bronco]

"Bronco has the ass of Bangkok ladyboy."
"Yeah, 10 years of living the ski town dream will do that to you."

It's still recovering!

[Kevo]

Adironrider hit the nail on the head. +1000 to everything he said.

I'll chime in from the sellout side of things- I initially graduated from college and planned on doing some kind of alternative to mainstream career life. I wanted to fight fire, guide backpacking trips (NOLS, etc) or figure out some other way make shit work in the mountains.

It quickly became apparent that doing so wasn't a going to provide even a halfway decent standard of living. I got sick and couldn't see doctors because of lack of money and no health insurance, I had no means of saving money and I had no leverage to negotiate what I was worth with employers. I also saw friends struggle to get out of the ski world into a career that could support a family.

I learned from some old time ski bums (some friends, some friend's parents) that there was a time when someone could make shit work doing manual labor or skilled labor in a ski town. One of my college roommate's dad was a carpenter in Aspen in the 70s and was able to buy land next to town and build one room cabin that he turned into a 3 bedroom house over several years. He and his buddies would help each other build houses in their free time.

Another college friend's dad was able to buy a house in Aspen in the late 70s/ early 80s working as a restaurant manager.

I know another old school ski bum guy who spent summers growing weed in Hawaii and winters renting a large house in Chamonix in the winter. He'd sublease rooms in the house to make additional money. He's now married with kids and owns a sweet little guest house.

Yetiman was able to bust his ass hustling in the fire world and ski world and afford to own a house in SLC.

It seems to me that most of those opportunities are now gone. There is no longer cheap land for next to any ski resort in the western US for a carpenter to buy. The soft drug trade has dried up as weed became legalized, restaurant managers can't afford to buy houses within 100 miles of the ski resort where they work, etc.

With real estate prices where they are now, it's also no longer possible to afford a house close to skiing by digging fire line in the summer.

I sold out to pursue a career and now own a house next to mountain biking and trail running in the front range. I-70 sucks, but I'm able to ski 30+ days a year and usually go on 2-3 week long ski trips per year all over the world. My career job, as frustrating as it can be, also offers a decent lifestyle- I've spent the past 5 years traveling around Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa on the company dime.

It sucks to say it, but there is a deadline for launching most professional careers. It's rare for someone in the "real" world to take a chance hiring someone in their mid-30s for a cush, high paying career with upward mobility that doesn't have experience in whatever industry that is. Those jobs go to promising 20 somethings who have recently graduated, are coming out of internships, etc.

The longer you hang out on pleasure island living in a ski town the less opportunities there are to launch a career and every year there are less opportunities in ski towns due to stagnant local wages and ever increasing costs. Add in issues with housing shortages due to short term rentals and out-of-towners buying up houses at prices way above what locals can afford and there is an ever shrinking environment for a ski bum to exist.

Stay on pleasure island for two long and there is a very real threat of waking up in a ski town in your 40s without options for providing for yourself and/or your family and with no options for making shit work back in the real world. When you eventually wash out to some shitty job in a less desirable, more affordable location there will be an endless line of wide eyed kids wanting to take your place who are willing to trade their future for a couple years of "mountain lifestyle".

Well, either that or you may be able to turn into bunion or fastfred.

[SB]

Just don’t flail your arms when you throw the towel.


Sent from my iPhone using TGR Forums

This, if you are tossing the towel, do it with style.

[char_]

Adironrider hit the nail on the head. +1000 to everything he said.

I'll chime in from the sellout side of things- I initially graduated from college and planned on doing some kind of alternative to mainstream career life. I wanted to fight fire, guide backpacking trips (NOLS, etc) or figure out some other way make shit work in the mountains.

It quickly became apparent that doing so wasn't a going to provide even a halfway decent standard of living. I got sick and couldn't see doctors because of lack of money and no health insurance, I had no means of saving money and I had no leverage to negotiate what I was worth with employers. I also saw friends struggle to get out of the ski world into a career that could support a family.

I learned from some old time ski bums (some friends, some friend's parents) that there was a time when someone could make shit work doing manual labor or skilled labor in a ski town. One of my college roommate's dad was a carpenter in Aspen in the 70s and was able to buy land next to town and build one room cabin that he turned into a 3 bedroom house over several years. He and his buddies would help each other build houses in their free time.

Another college friend's dad was able to buy a house in Aspen in the late 70s/ early 80s working as a restaurant manager.

I know another old school ski bum guy who spent summers growing weed in Hawaii and winters renting a large house in Chamonix in the winter. He'd sublease rooms in the house to make additional money. He's now married with kids and owns a sweet little guest house.

Yetiman was able to bust his ass hustling in the fire world and ski world and afford to own a house in SLC.

It seems to me that most of those opportunities are now gone. There is no longer cheap land for next to any ski resort in the western US for a carpenter to buy. The soft drug trade has dried up as weed became legalized, restaurant managers can't afford to buy houses within 100 miles of the ski resort where they work, etc.

With real estate prices where they are now, it's also no longer possible to afford a house close to skiing by digging fire line in the summer.

I sold out to pursue a career and now own a house next to mountain biking and trail running in the front range. I-70 sucks, but I'm able to ski 30+ days a year and usually go on 2-3 week long ski trips per year all over the world. My career job, as frustrating as it can be, also offers a decent lifestyle- I've spent the past 5 years traveling around Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa on the company dime.

It sucks to say it, but there is a deadline for launching most professional careers. It's rare for someone in the "real" world to take a chance hiring someone in their mid-30s for a cush, high paying career with upward mobility that doesn't have experience in whatever industry that is. Those jobs go to promising 20 somethings who have recently graduated, are coming out of internships, etc.

The longer you hang out on pleasure island living in a ski town the less opportunities there are to launch a career and every year there are less opportunities in ski towns due to stagnant local wages and ever increasing costs. Add in issues with housing shortages due to short term rentals and out-of-towners buying up houses at prices way above what locals can afford and there is an ever shrinking environment for a ski bum to exist.

Stay on pleasure island for two long and there is a very real threat of waking up in a ski town in your 40s without options for providing for yourself and/or your family and with no options for making shit work back in the real world. When you eventually wash out to some shitty job in a less desirable, more affordable location there will be an endless line of wide eyed kids wanting to take your place who are willing to trade their future for a couple years of "mountain lifestyle".

Well, either that or you may be able to turn into bunion or fastfred.

I have to agree with this. I made the switch from wildlandfire and seasonal work in my early 30's. This was a combination of realizing I wasn't doing what I wanted to do, was not saving enough to retire, had no savings if something bad happened and was wearing my body down.

Went back to school for 3 years. It's fucking expensive and I will be paying it off for a long while to come.


It was very difficult to land an entry level job in my field. I made it happen, but was commuting 1.5 hours one way for several years and had to take a tangential route to move into the position I wanted. Current state of the labor market meant I was able to get on track and am making relatively good money with good benefits and security.

Super glad I made the move now that I have kids.

Not sure how that all would have worked out in a different labor market.

My wife is doing what detrusor did. It's crazy hard and all consuming.

[skiJ]

I think in the phase of my "ski town life" where things were really cooking along well these were the key elements:

1) I lucked into a management job, but that "luck" was also the nature of a GM who knew the culture where I grew up and correctly anticipated...:
.......1a) I could not, and would not allow my ski shop to be a piece of shit, so I worked from 6 or 7am to 7-10pm 6 or 7 days a week, on salary, because I love skiing and ski gear and tuning and repair and bootfitting and all of it....and, believe it or not, I loved giving that experience to vacationers, and because it was my shop to manage and I was simply not gonna let the work go undone. Period. I worked myself raw at that job, but also it was a job full of love. I loved my employees, I loved that ski area, I loved being a part of the whole thing.

2) The management job and doing decently with it led to a rep and a network of people, including a spectacular girlfriend and her giant network of people, that led to lots of other things, and the hustles were on. Landscaping for realtors on properties for sale....picking lettuce on an organic farm for fancy restaurants in town....wildland fire with a small contractor....demolition for a private individuals construction project....falling trees for a forestry contractor....flipping pickup trucks and motorcycles for $$$...

So I say....be there, be good, keep knocking around and meeting people until you stick to something decent....then hustle hustle hustle. It's not undoable

Or go do "real world" near the mountains and manage your time and schedule and budget and vehicle like a ninja.
The devil's in the details. Sadly, skiing as a lifestyle, for non-trustfunders, is a harsh grind. I don't know of any scenario where that's not true. So you have to grind it out.

I just longboarded and walked the dog. There was some awful fucking cunt with a gaggle of little kids taking up the entire path, so I chose to emergency slide instead of blowing past little kids at 30 mph on the skateboard. This took the form of a David Lee Roth knee slide, totally eating the insides of my ankles and wrecking some vans. Then I went and hobbled around with the dog. Touron explosion (!!!) in our favorite beach walking area, so we had to hobble around elsewhere. Poodle gave me disappointment eyes, because he doesn't understand tourons, and why they're on his beach.
Now I have to go spend the next 8 hours in a bus seat with my sore ankles and wrists, oozing road rash getting infected by disgusting bus germs.

Grinding. Unless you've got that family money you're gonna be grinding.

worth preservation. i-as has lived this -- (tj)

[ill-advised strategy]

In a lot of ways this is just like any other sport. For every mlb player there are hundreds if not thousands who played a year or two of A ball, or whatever, and it just didn’t click together.
If you knock around playing AA until you’re 38 and make no money, good luck transitioning to bus driving....not that it’s not doable, but it’s going to be heartbreaking and painful.
Jen Hudak is doing some work on this stuff...transitions from being an athlete to the next phase. It’s a hard thing.

[PNWbrit]

In a lot of ways this is just like any other sport. For every mlb player there are hundreds if not thousands who played a year or two of A ball, or whatever, and it just didn’t click together.
If you knock around playing AA until you’re 38 and make no money, good luck transitioning to bus driving....

Buying a bar in Boston might work better for a washed up baseball player?

[DBdude]

This isn’t rocket science - get a skill that you can be paid for and start gaining experience and finding a place that is a compromise between career and fun

The op has no skill set except working hard. That’s what got my parents by. They are immigrants with a high school education. That shit does not fly anymore

Again to the OP - no one cares about your family business

Can you do bookkeeping? Do you know accounting

Can you set up a network, fix a pc?

Get some skills and stop fucking whining - I graduated from college at 34 with a business degree and made a career but I don’t have this notion that I need to be a rockstar on powder days at world class resorts that I live by

Wake the fuck up

Listening to anything trusty Fred says is a bad idea because you don’t have a trust fund - deal

The best advise I can tell you is marry someone that is on the same page as you

My ex decided we were moving to Vermont and then we ended up divorcing

My life would be shit ton better if she decided to divorce me in seattle where we put our careers together
Sent from my iPhone using TGR Forums

[Bunion 2020]

Stay on pleasure island for two long and there is a very real threat of waking up in a ski town in your 40s without options for providing for yourself and/or your family and with no options for making shit work back in the real world. When you eventually wash out to some shitty job in a less desirable, more affordable location there will be an endless line of wide eyed kids wanting to take your place who are willing to trade their future for a couple years of "mountain lifestyle".

Well, either that or you may be able to turn into bunion or fastfred.

Well 1st of all it is Not bunion and 2nd, as I said, results vary. Timing is everything and I feel pretty good about my future, I turn 62 in a few months.

[DBdude]

No kidding


Sent from my iPhone using TGR Forums

[dunfree]

You are 62? Why do you think your timing is relevant to someone who's mid-30s? It's not "results vary" it's "past performance is not indicative of future performance".

[PNWbrit]

You are 62? Why do you think your timing is relevant to someone who's mid-30s? It's not "results vary" it's "past performance is not indicative of future performance".

If I was trying to make a life in big sky or Bozeman I'd listen to Bunion.. from what I've heard.. Harry too.

[Foggy_Goggles]

A couple things. Assuming it is PhishShow, he gets props from me for being his real self on here over the years. He acts a little AKPM, and some of us fling him some shit. Been that way for decades now.

Teachers, plumbers, waiters and retail managers are buying homes all over the intermountain west. Not in the most expensive zip codes, but it can be done.

If you are in your 30s and are categorizing your life as "throwing in the towel", I think you have bigger questions than where to live. I'm certainly not the best person to take advice from as I don't always have the best attitude, but life is what you make of it. Easier said than don't, but you gotta figure out what makes you happy.

[plugboots]

The reality of marrying up is it costs a little bit of your soul pretty frequently. You will give up a little piece of yourself regularly in the compromise it takes to sustain that marriage. I know...

JHC, you’re really doing it wrong.

[dunfree]

If I was trying to make a life in big sky or Bozeman I'd listen to Bunion

but you aren't, are you?

[hawkgt]

plumber
electrician

$$$$$ min show up fee

[Kevo]

Teachers, plumbers, waiters and retail managers are buying homes all over the intermountain west. Not in the most expensive zip codes, but it can be done.

Where? For serious. I'd like to know.

Re: the OP-

I've never met the dude, but it seems that he f'd around in college and focused on skiing on his parents dime. If I remember correctly, he was one of the only CU kids good enough at skiing to hang with the core TGR Colorado croud back in the day. Not sure if he graduated but eventually he went back to NJ and his parents bailed him out with a job managing their carwash.

Lots of life experience later (GF left when she graduated nursing school, etc) and he made the existential choice to move back out west to find the happiness he left behind. This probably meant walking away from the family bankroll?? That's a big choice, and one that I'm sure wasn't made lightly.

From the sounds of it, he's been trying to work different angles in the real estate world and doing other stuff to get by.

Look dude, I don't know you but there is no reason for the alias. Lots of people on TGR know little bits about your story and it seems like you are well liked by people who know you in real life. Seems like the reputation from 10 years ago of being a kinda out of touch spoiled CU kid is long gone.

A lot of us on here were naive CU kids who had been sheltered from real life experience. I'm sure some of the shit I talked about and posted on here when I was 20 is cringe worthy.

Did you finish your degree? What's it in? Do you have a dream job? What is it? What parts of the work you've done do you enjoy the most?

Good luck, OP.

[Foggy_Goggles]

Where? For serious. I'd like to know.

Really? Within my circle of friends and I don't have many...Granby, Fraser, Blue River Estates, Steamboat, Draper, Driggs, etc.

Oh yeah...people in glass houses and all that regarding what you wrote about WRG.

[PNWbrit]

but you aren't, are you? you listen to the 60 year old crusty fucks where you work? TGR - pick an asshole talking their book, there's sure to be one telling you what you want to hear.

I moved halfway way around the world in my thirties... to where I wanted to live.

I don't listen to the present 30 somethings about how they couldn't make it work away from their family jobs or lack of capital investment or over qualification for being an employee like the OP does.

Listening to the crusty fucks who made it work might be his answer?

Maybe asking the crusty fucks before he moved there and couldn't make it work might have helped?

[dunfree]

I don't listen to the present 30 somethings about how they couldn't make it work away from their family jobs or lack of capital investment or over qualification for being an employee like the OP does.

all the assholes selling mountain dreams need suckers like phishshow buying in; but then what's TGR without another mountain dream selection bias thread of dickswinging.

[PNWbrit]

all the assholes selling mountain dreams need suckers like phishshow buying in.

Weren't you a TGR web content exec?

[billyk]

Weren't you a TGR web content exec?

That was dunfee. This is dunfree.

[BmillsSkier]

On my 25th birthday I woke up, realized I was one missed paycheck from being evicted or not being able to feed my 3 year old as a single dad. Rode my bike to the local college, some of my racing buddies were in admissions and said just sign up, we’ll juggle the paperwork until student loans can come through. School started in 2 days. Fast forward...4 years of college in 2 years by crushing myself. Then Med school, residency and now I can live wherever the fuck I want. I think it was worth the pain and expense but you need to take a hard look before signing up.


Sent from my iPhone using TGR Forums

Has to be noted again. Mad props.

Fawn Leibowitz

I saw what you did and it's worth quoting here.

You are 30 years old and want to throw in the towel?

I didn't read anything else. Maybe Im taking that out of context.

Yo Bobby, I'm with ya. To quote F. Scott Fitzgerald (loosely), "it's never too late to start again... I hope you have the courage to do so."

whatwouldrogdo

Probably ski ice moguls worse than anyone on the planet ever and brag about it to the world. Then go ice surfing and brag about it.

"Bronco has the ass of Bangkok ladyboy."
"Yeah, 10 years of living the ski town dream will do that to you."

OP, have you ever considered a move back to the EC? Specifically, Londonderry VT?

One day all your talk about Londonderry is going to end up with a sea of Maggots descending upon Londonderry like abused and broken lemmings. And then what? Who will feed them their drugs?

Just don’t flail your arms when you throw the towel.


Sent from my iPhone using TGR Forums

Yup, worth noting. #candide

Cheers

Cheers, brother.

That was dunfee. This is dunfree.

"is it?"