X Games Weekend

In case ESPN hasn't already altered you, it's X Games Weekend here in Aspen. For you, that means four days worth of quality alternative sports programming on your television. For Lauren and I, it means we can't swing a dead cat in town without hitting some 5'5" sixteen year old sporting a double-XL jacket and a bandana around his neck. Good times.

To be fair, the games really are a spectacle worthy of seeing up close, but with Aspen nearly doubling in size for the four days of events, the logistics involved in getting to and from the venue have just become too much for Lauren and I to overcome.

As a result, this was a relatively lazy weekend for the Nitti family. On Saturday morning, I headed up to town to work for a few hours, and as I sat in my office, a storm blew in and dumped a foot of snow in less than three hours. Knowing that Ajax would be desolate with all the action unfolding on neighboring Buttermilk, I decided to head out for a quick afternoon ski in search of some powder.
There's the bike armed and ready to go.

The mountain, as expected, was deserted. I dropped into Last Dollar trees -- usually tarnished with tracks minutes after the first gondola of the day unloads -- and found no signs of recent human activity. It was such a rare sight, I decided to stop and snap a photo. The skiing, as you might presume from the image above, was sublime: perfectly spaced aspens and 12-18 inches of new.

On Sunday, I snuck out early in the morning to take Maci for a climb and ski. When we reached the top of Tiehack, we stumbled upon Ski Patrol digging out from Saturday night's storm.

Maci, as she's known to do, quickly befriended the female patroller and decided to participate in an impromptu yet carefully orchestrated game of toss and catch:

And a quick action still as well:

On the ski down, I thought I'd shoot a video to prove to my wife the level of insanity we're dealing with when it comes to our dog. Here's Maci, for the first 200 vertical feet or so of our descent, jousting with two 180cm skis armed with razor sharp edges. Despite my best efforts (as evidenced by the violent pole swinging in the video), she doesn't relax until a quarter of the way down the mountain, when she's burned off some of her excess exuberance.

If it seems like these pictures are suspiciously devoid of Lauren, that's because my wife took the weekend to relax around the house and knock out some report cards. You can't imagine how time consuming it can be trying to determine if little Jimmy deserves an Alligator or Giraffe in spelling.

Aside from the two quick trips discussed above, I was right there by my wife's side all weekend, partaking in my latest obsession: learning to play guitar.

I've always had a bit of OCD in my DNA, and the guitar is just the latest in a long line of life-consuming endeavors. Looking back, my 33 years can pretty accurately be summarized by the following "Ages," each identified by whatever unhealthy fixation dominated my days at the time.

Ages 0-5: Flinstone Vitamins. I once hid behind the couch and ate an entire bottle. In case you should find your own son/daugher in this predicament, worry not. It didn't kill me, but I did pee florescent green for a week. Thirty years later, a prominent neurosurgeon would inform me that this obsession was responsible for my super-human strength.*

Ages 5-11: The Hardy Boys. The adventures of Frank, Joe and, to a lesser extent, Chet kickstarted my love for the written word. I read every book multiple times, and in my earliest years, would give myself headaches by refusing to stop until I'd finished a book in one sitting. This period came to a crashing halt when my older brother Dave pointed out that the tales of my beloved sleuths were rife with homoerotic undertones.

Ages 12-18: Girls and soccer. Neither would bring me much success during this period.

Ages 18-22: Binge drinking. And thus ended the soccer obsession.

Ages 22-23: Self-loathing. Hating myself, nothing I did was ever good enough; standard early 20's post-college reaction really.

Ages 24-27: High protien diets, clean living, and exceedingly tight shirts.

Ages 28-30: Triathlon. Ironically, this age was identical to the self-loathing age, only I could run faster.

Ages 30-33: Skiing and mountaineering. This age was rudely interuppted by the short-lived "brain surgery" stage.

And that pretty much sums it up. I'm not sure how long this "guitar age" will last, but with a kid on the way, I imagine I'll at least make it a priority to learn enough to allow me to torture our offspring with unrelenting, nonsensical songs about him/her.

As I've discovered, the irony inherent in learning the guitar is that the songs that lend themselves to a beginner's skills may not be the songs you're yearning to play. For example, I was quite pleased when I learned how to play Green Day's "Time of Your Life" until it dawned on me that, you know, I have no desire to ever sing or play Green Day's "Time of Your Life."

Oh well, you've got to crawl before you walk.

*may not have happened