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  1. #1
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    I ended up in Colorado because some chick

    Prologue
    The other night under the bullshit milkyway sky I was ripping from one end of the county to the other. Reciting cliché after cliché that I could imagine. It was that dead calm in the middle of a summer night, when the tourists are passed out drunk and the worker bees are sound asleep.

    I watched the radar detector as much as the scenery that had changed so much in the past twenty five years. I went from a kid who would ride his wobbly bike from one place to another drunk and stoned to flying along in my brand new car sober as the half moon overhead.

    Curious to how this happened? I had to crawl out of the arms of my new girl at three am to leave and find my own bed. It was one of many boundaries we set together and since this is all new, I couldn’t be at her house or in her bed when the morning sun broke and her kids woke up.

    It was on this drive that my head turned and a bit of nostalgia swept through my half awake brain. We found each other at a twelve step meeting some years ago, but life’s intricacies kept us apart until now. We were the carnage, the ugly underbelly, the misused nights, and cosmic meltdowns of twenty something years of good living in a ski town. It’s the brightness of the stars in the sky that you won’t get anywhere else. It’s the dull fade of the senses, the backwards reality check of being drunk and stoned, high on life yet faded on reality. Where skiing and the pursuit of outdoor greatness trumps all other goals that normal people wish for as young adults.

  2. #2
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    I
    I ended up in colorado because of some chick. She had a line on a job and a place to live, so I was like, “fuck yea I’m there.” She pretty much told me straight up I wasn’t invited. I spent the next month angling to make it happen and we finally headed to the never land. It took a month to get there, but I was chilling on the drugs at that point, so life was all about exploring and being alive in the moment. It’s all because I was drinking at age 12 and smoking pot regularly by 15, lucky for me I gave up alcohol for weed by sixteen. The problem was the hard drugs that eventually kicked in by my late teens. Escape was the name of the game. That’s why today it’s all about self improvement, my higher power, and an even keel these days.

    But I digress, I was living in the city at the time, trying this acting gig and disappointing my parents as usual, but nothing like when my brother stole an airplane. I on the other hand was sucking way to much cock and not getting anywhere. Unfortunately, I’ve been nothing but a failure up until now. To this day I miss blasting down Broadway retarted out of my mind at three in the morning on my mountain bike, shit you do as a kid. Shooting fireworks off all over the east village. I was young and a romantic. Sure I’d been to Colorado before. My best friend “sue” and I conjured up all kinds of fucked up trips to take. Like eating mushrooms and driving into the deep south, waking up in the late afternoon at some HoJo like hotel in buttfuck nowhere, stepping out your hotel room door looking like a clown. Two bowls in and snorting Ritalin, only to find true Americans in their Sunday best heading to after church brunch on Easter Sunday.

    On that one trip, Sue and I were headed to Mexico for a weekend or three of debauchery. Instead it turned into a layover of a couple days in Durango in the middle of winter getting crazy. I was sold on Colorado, not sure why, but I was. I spent my teen years in a haze of Hunter S Thompson and Jack Kerouac trying to be something I never was. If someone wanted to hot knife hash, snort heroin, and do something so outlandish that it seemed suicidal I was in.

    So back to this chick, ski bums, and the backstory, the chick who had the massive hook up and we took it. A quaint little cabin, access to a commercial kitchen full of food, and Keystone Colorado. I was pretty over the acting shit, maybe it was over me. It took me twenty years before I was ready to go back into a theatre. I kissed the dreams of being famous good bye and started bumming. That cabin and free food hook was a golden ticket a life affirming and changing minute. That was just the beginning of living in tents for the summer, waiting your turn to move into a different cabin, and scoring one cheap rental after another. I’d find the cleanest clothes I could and show up at some hotel buffet in town. Acting, like I belonged at the conference, only to eat quietly in the corner then disappear while my dog sat out in the cold car waiting. It was all about abusing the system.

  3. #3
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    II
    Suddenly my life did a 180. Everything I knew, everything I wanted at the ripe old age of post teenage angst had changed. I was going to be twenty something soon. I never intended to be a ski bum, wasn’t even sure what one was. Lucky for me I started skiing around third grade, I guess that’s what well healed families do. But was never really “into it” so much that’d I’d move west and proclaim I’m a ski bum living some dream inside a glossy magazine. At that time I was nothing more than wanting to recite “howl” at an open reading, or channel my inner frustrations in Lanford Wilsons character Pale, maybe even try to figure out how to be a Merry Prankster.

    I thought I tied one on in high school and the short there after, but ski town logic took it too another level. I couldn’t believe that I could party like a rock star, jamb four people into a bathroom stall, and snort cut up ski town blow off the top of a toilet tank or some ugly chicks compact mirror. I didn’t know you could do shots, sip beer, get free food, also known as the all you can drink and eat for twenty five dollar deals. The kicker was I could ski day after day, charging hard, then chase my dream of being a pro mountain biker all summer while regularly getting shit faced. I was an athlete in high school but I lettered in every gay sport you could go out for, nothing manly. It was that brief gap, where I was I lost in a heavy swirl of acid and amphetamines that my strength and whatever athleticism I had disappeared. But here, in ski town usa, I was back in top shape.

    My first wife was smoking hot and could out drink anyone like a pro. I don’t know how many walk in coolers, free shots, restaurant offices, blown kegs, and slimy bar tops we stuck around in together. The back corners of dark bars in the off season. A bunch of dip shit locals watching her run lines down some skinny chicks bare stomach while laying on dinner table, using a straw from behind the bar, inching her way towards that little bit of lacy thong showing just before the skinny girls low rider jeans start. Trying not to laugh as five guys cheer her on to snort the whole line at once from her belly button to her lace. There is no tomorrow or fear in a ski town, it’s all about today and this second. For ten fucking years I was able to have not one care in the world. No one telling me what to do, work was for chumps, but when you had to, you paraded around like a tough guy working construction. Ski town is all about who was the biggest billy badass. I would honestly go back in time to relive every minute. Party, ski, and work a bit. A hundred days skiing was effortless. You’d actually have to take a week off mid season because you got burnt skiing so much.

    But by age thirty something I decided to grow up but not really. The partying eased up, my wife went to rehab, and I started to change but not really. Pay check to paycheck. She couldn’t keep away from the party and the popular kids in town, so we parted ways. We both struggled, but I wasn’t the one pilled out during the day and coked up drunk during the night. I was the one stoned all day and drunk every night. I worked alittle more often than not, bought a house, to this day I don’t know how and why, but I did, dumb luck. I still held onto all those dreams and the fantasy. Injuries started to stack up but nothing more than a minor set back here and there. That was all until one day where the shit got so real it became one of those “why me?” As I laid on the table in a doctors office miles away in some shit place like Lakewood. I was always looking for the out though.

    Just cruising with no goal or no reason. That’s my thirties. Stuck in a ski town. They put a gondola in a fifteen minute walk from the house. I could ski down from the top of imperial, three thousand feet and some miles into town, walk over to happy hour, jump on the bus and be at my door all in a matter of minutes from anywhere I need to be. I started to argue with a life like that, but never had an answer.

  4. #4
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    III
    I started looking for wife number two. A man child had been created, I was a chicks worst nightmare. But I was stable and had house? Right? I just didn’t have that special thing girls are looking for in a mate. That’d be a guy they could control and order around, demanding I had to go somewhere with them instead of skiing or bike riding. My father even pointed out to me, this is a guy I have spent zero time with since I left high school at age 17, he pointed out finding a girl who is going to allow me to live my life on my terms like I do, is pretty much impossible. She’d say something dumb like, “we’re going to go do this with so and so tomorrow and I can’t wait.” I’d answer: “I’m busy, I gotta ski tomorrow.” It was a pretty much downward spiral, slide, face plant disaster from there.

    So by the late thirties I decided I’m no dummy and I can do this. Work got real serious. Suddenly I had money but my dick was so far out on the line it was getting smashed every day. Forty struck and the same guy who I threw up all over when I was twenty two years old is introducing me to his clients like I’m some legit business owner.

    I’m on the elevator going up to the third floor. You say hi to all the people you know as you wander around town like a real local. It’s like a secret handshake and nod you learn after twenty years. The people you rub elbows with are suddenly the policy makers, the people who make things happen, the captains of this land locked cruise ship. I woke up one day to realize I’m not the fuck up I spent twenty years making. It took forty years to mature and take on some responsibility. It’s almost like when I was given a time out in high school and given in school suspension. I should have known I was destine for this life.

  5. #5
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    this is good already and i'm only through the prologue. thanks ff.
    swing your fucking sword.

  6. #6
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    IV
    The noise of tourists and the constant eb and flow of all the people who are searching and trying out the fantasy and dream of living free in the mountains is all right there. Growing up in a college town seemed to prepare me for a lifetime surrounded by bright eye sun burned twenty something’s who are in search of peter pan. Who are fighting a violent affair every day to not end up like their parents.
    Shit have I found it? Prolly not, but through a couple years of counseling I know I found it. I know how lucky I am. I just can’t come to terms with it. The freshman class ahead of me, the old timers aging out and moving somewhere lower and warmer. We are all just wandering behind the scenes of a place where thousand come to escape the drudgery of monotony. A ski town. A fantasy world. The dazzle and ease of movement like stars on ice.

    I look back and shake my head, knowing I can still crush it if I want. The cannula has just become an accessory to high altitude living a reminder that I’m mortal. My luck is I didn’t waste away like everyone else does. I figured it out before it was too late. Drinking too much, unable to give up a few bumps a couple times a week at the bar, or the constant bubble of the bong. I try not to complain about conditions or weather. To have the sky above me, skis on my feet, and the ability to still find that quiet place while surrounded by thousands of people searching for what I found long ago.
    My life has become the worn pages of a faded book as I look around town. The torn pages of bad memories of what happened here and there. The bright spots in between. A picture taken of the mountain backdrop like every other tourist. That shotgun wedding I had on the side of a dead end dirt road that never lead to the other side. Silly pranks. Cars that got stripped of their tires and left up on blocks on main street during the off season.

    I know the ins and outs, I know where to get that hook up to make my life easy. We’re not talking about a sixer for a ski tune, we’re talking about money and living a comfortable life type of hook up. The network of people you have created over the past twenty something years. I leave the bars, drinking, the shitty drugs, and the sewing of “I’m a local” patches on their ski gear to the next generation of kids. As they wash in and wash out like a seasonal tide.

    Eventually I’ll walk away. I’ll be sitting in some “anytown” usa spinning bullshit tales about how I used to ski and how the lifts were right there. There was single track right out my front door. That I lived in the greatest small town in the world. How I used to sleep with my dog under six blankets because there was no heat or running water in my cabin. How I charmed the pants off of some millionaires wife just so they’d write me fifty thousand dollar checks every couple weeks. It was all an accident a simple detour that wasn’t planned.

    There is no where to go, where do you go after this? And this girl, she’s been there and back too. That’s what I cherish about the possibility of next twenty five years that I found someone who has gotten into drunken shouting matches on main street with their partner and had the cops called on them. The ugly messes, that’s our story, its the same but the ingredients are slightly different. The scars are hidden behind the well tanned skin from being outside day after day for years. That smirk and smile that hides curiosity and the painful truths. For now I drive across the county late at night remembering the past and the thinking about the future. I’m still here.

  7. #7
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    Dec 2009
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    Good read. Congrats on figuring it out.

  8. #8
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    Sep 2008
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    Thanks for that, Fred.

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  9. #9
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    Apr 2008
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    Denver
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    Yeah good stuff. A lot of us can relate to this. Seems cathartic to read, and maybe good on ya to share it with the tribe. Definitely a little different than what you typically post up. Thanks for sharing FF!


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    stay outta my line

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Oct 2007
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    2 hours to Whiteface
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    Quote Originally Posted by fastfred View Post
    IV
    The noise of tourists and the constant eb and flow of all the people who are searching and trying out the fantasy and dream of living free in the mountains is all right there. Growing up in a college town seemed to prepare me for a lifetime surrounded by bright eye sun burned twenty something’s who are in search of peter pan. Who are fighting a violent affair every day to not end up like their parents.
    Shit have I found it? Prolly not, but through a couple years of counseling I know I found it. I know how lucky I am. I just can’t come to terms with it. The freshman class ahead of me, the old timers aging out and moving somewhere lower and warmer. We are all just wandering behind the scenes of a place where thousand come to escape the drudgery of monotony. A ski town. A fantasy world. The dazzle and ease of movement like stars on ice.

    I look back and shake my head, knowing I can still crush it if I want. The cannula has just become an accessory to high altitude living a reminder that I’m mortal. My luck is I didn’t waste away like everyone else does. I figured it out before it was too late. Drinking too much, unable to give up a few bumps a couple times a week at the bar, or the constant bubble of the bong. I try not to complain about conditions or weather. To have the sky above me, skis on my feet, and the ability to still find that quiet place while surrounded by thousands of people searching for what I found long ago.
    My life has become the worn pages of a faded book as I look around town. The torn pages of bad memories of what happened here and there. The bright spots in between. A picture taken of the mountain backdrop like every other tourist. That shotgun wedding I had on the side of a dead end dirt road that never lead to the other side. Silly pranks. Cars that got stripped of their tires and left up on blocks on main street during the off season.

    I know the ins and outs, I know where to get that hook up to make my life easy. We’re not talking about a sixer for a ski tune, we’re talking about money and living a comfortable life type of hook up. The network of people you have created over the past twenty something years. I leave the bars, drinking, the shitty drugs, and the sewing of “I’m a local” patches on their ski gear to the next generation of kids. As they wash in and wash out like a seasonal tide.

    Eventually I’ll walk away. I’ll be sitting in some “anytown” usa spinning bullshit tales about how I used to ski and how the lifts were right there. There was single track right out my front door. That I lived in the greatest small town in the world. How I used to sleep with my dog under six blankets because there was no heat or running water in my cabin. How I charmed the pants off of some millionaires wife just so they’d write me fifty thousand dollar checks every couple weeks. It was all an accident a simple detour that wasn’t planned.

    There is no where to go, where do you go after this? And this girl, she’s been there and back too. That’s what I cherish about the possibility of next twenty five years that I found someone who has gotten into drunken shouting matches on main street with their partner and had the cops called on them. The ugly messes, that’s our story, its the same but the ingredients are slightly different. The scars are hidden behind the well tanned skin from being outside day after day for years. That smirk and smile that hides curiosity and the painful truths. For now I drive across the county late at night remembering the past and the thinking about the future. I’m still here.
    Man,

    I'm glad you came out the other side all the wiser, many don't.

    That was a great read. Thanks for sharing your the pictures of your past.

    Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

  11. #11
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    Sep 2001
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    Orangina
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    Very incapsulating of the essence of coming of age in a ski town. We change or we don't. Unfortunately around these parts, those that didn't grow or change In a meaningful way have passed or are well on their way. Small communities like ski towns have a way of becoming near static studies on everyone around you. It's inescapable because there's no anonominity to be had, even if that's what you need. Yes, it's a lifestyle but it'll catch up to everyone at some point or another, in some form or another.

    Good read.

  12. #12
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    Nov 2005
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    Thanks for the memoir. And I am SO glad that you got in touch with your inner punctuationalist.
    Forum Cross Pollinator, gratuitously strident

  13. #13
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    Dec 2005
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    Great read.


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  14. #14
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    Dec 2012
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    17,748
    Good read fred! It's papapooski level, but without demi-glace and deer carcasses. At least up to this point.

    Anyway, quick trade question. Is everyone installing flooring now after the baseboard molding is in? Or just this chick?

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    "timberridge is terminally vapid" -- a fortune cookie in Yueyang

  15. #15
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    Sep 2009
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    Summit County version of TJ Burke?

  16. #16
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    Nov 2005
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    Making the Bowl Great Again
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    Quote Originally Posted by Timberridge View Post
    Good read fred! It's papapooski level, but without demi-glace and deer carcasses. At least up to this point.

    Anyway, quick trade question. Is everyone installing flooring now after the baseboard molding is in? Or just this chick?
    This might actually be OK in this case. Clearly this is not new construction. It's a lot easier for a hack to install a shoe molding than to remove and replace a profiled base like that. But floating floors will always suck, so there's that.

  17. #17
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    Apr 2013
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    Goulder
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    891
    Chasin buffets, brah!

    The life I miss
    the drugs made me realize it's not about the drugs

  18. #18
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    Apr 2004
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    Southeast New York
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    11,766
    So much sounds so familiar. It makes me think of what might have happened had I stayed rather than followed the chick I met in CO back to NY. I have a fair idea though because we went and visited that town about 10 years after we left together. About 75% of my friends were in that maturing and doing well at age 40 thing like FF talks about here. The other 25% were still in the same place they were when we were in our late 20's. The other 50% left as mentioned above. Yup my math sux but I can blame it on all the years of ski town life

  19. #19
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    Sep 2006
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    8,242
    Have you given any thought to becoming an influencer on TikTok? I hear there's serious money to be made.
    "We don't beat the reaper by living longer, we beat the reaper by living well and living fully." - Randy Pausch

  20. #20
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    Sep 2005
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    I came pretty close to this life. Passing through Breck on my way back to college after being in CA for GD new year's shows, 2 buddies were jammed into a house in Blue River (one was living in a laundry room) and we crashed on their couch; heck, maybe Fred even knows them. One of them was working me hard to bail on school and stay and ski. I was afraid that if I listened to him I might never graduate, and I only had 1 year to go.

    Made it back to Colorado to become a permanent resident -- except Durango this time -- 3 years later. With a college degree.
    "fuck off you asshat gaper shit for brains fucktard wanker." - Jesus Christ
    "She was tossing her bean salad with the vigor of a Drunken Pop princess so I walked out of the corner and said.... "need a hand?"" - Odin
    "everybody's got their hooks into you, fuck em....forge on motherfuckers, drag all those bitches across the goal line with you." - (not so) ill-advised strategy

  21. #21
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    Dec 2010
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    Oh FF I love you too boo

  22. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by simple View Post
    Oh FF I love you too boo
    you can suck my balls, south park style, all the way

    it was just a story for my remdeidal english writing class I took two years ago to make me smarter it's all bullshit

  23. #23
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    Mar 2009
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    3,269
    FF, fiction or not this would make a great one man play touring ski towns. Think of the milf slaying after each performance AND you can turbo start your acting career.

  24. #24
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    May 2016
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    3,581
    I ended up in Texas because some chick. I was unemployed in California, got a job offer in Austin, and my wife liked me better when I could pay the bills.

  25. #25
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    Oct 2007
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    12,609
    I had chicks try to drag me off to WA, MI, GA, etc but I always gravitated back to CO on my own accord and found one who refuses to leave. Now I want to move to the desert. Such is life.

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