Tag: transitions

Kicking the Seasonal Avoidance Disorder habit: How I learned to love my favorite places all year long

We rented bikes and took the lifts to the top, from whence we careened back down the mountain on trails hidden all winter by feet of snow. The runs I’d skied so many times looked different, shed of their cold-weather clothing, but not at all unpleasant. It had never occurred to me that there was more to this place than the way I saw it between December and March, that there were nearly 2,500 acres of unexplored terrain beneath the mountain’s annual 300” of snowfall. It had never occurred to me that Copper Mountain had layers.

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I grew up skiing at Copper Mountain, a resort at the edge of I-70 just shy of Vail Pass. I skied there dozens of times every winter in college, and I could’ve recited the runs accessed by each lift from memory or told you exactly how to get from Super Bee to Spaulding Bowl and back again. I knew when, on any given lift, to look for the tree adorned with Mardi Gras beads and discarded bras—that ski area staple—and that I had precisely four-and-a-half minutes to choke down the disfigured peanut butter sandwich in my pocket before the American Flyer quad deposited me at the top of my favorite run.

I thought I knew Copper Mountain pretty well. Continue reading “Kicking the Seasonal Avoidance Disorder habit: How I learned to love my favorite places all year long” →

From the archives: On Couples’ Yoga

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Ah, Milt’s! I can almost hear the chorus of angels.

From the archives: This Valentine’s Day, I will be in Moab, running an excruciatingly long race with my perma-Valentine (more on that next week). I anticipate a romantic dinner at Milt’s, where Bix will find it endearing when I finish my double bacon cheeseburger and start in on his onion rings, and not just because he is now legally bound to think everything I do is cute. In any case, in my absence, here’s a throwback to one of my less fun (but ultimately more memorable!) Ghosts of V-Days Past.
Continue reading “From the archives: On Couples’ Yoga” →

Jack of all trades, master of my own destiny (or something)

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I got a job the day I turned sixteen, and until this fall, I’ve held one job or another (sometimes more than one) ever since. They weren’t all great. Here is an incomplete sampling of jobs I’ve had:

  • Pet food salesgirl (my first, but not worst, job)
  • Abercrombie model (briefly, and yet somehow this does not make it less embarrassing)
  • Grocery store courtesy clerk/cart pusher
  • Horse groom
  • College campus catering intern, and, later, Queen of the Catering Interns (I was a tyrant)
  • Shoe salesperson at sport-store (they did not care that I did not sport)
  • Waitress/bartender (of course)
  • Indentured servant for large climbing-focused non-profit (this lasted another nine months after my semesterlong internship technically ended, and taught me how valuable my inability to say “no” is to the non-profit industry)
  • High school teacher
  • Kindergarten teacher
  • Teacher of hippie-dippy class at a school we literally called “Farm School” (we mostly Nordic skied)
  • I am counting graduate school because it took up SO MUCH TIME
  • Avalanche safety instructor (kind of—mostly for kids, but sometimes adults took me seriously, too)
  • Whitewater raft guide, also kind of
  • Backpacking instructor
  • Horse groom, again (these things always come full-circle)

Continue reading “Jack of all trades, master of my own destiny (or something)” →