Aside from representing lyrics from my sister Karen's favorite Breathe song (free tube of partially used toothpaste to whoever knows the song title. You pay S&H!), the title pretty much explains what's been going on in Aspen since the last post. The snow has begun to fall with earnest, and with it the quality of the skiing has improved exponentially. I got the opportunity to poke around in the backcountry off Richmond Ridge last Monday, but alas, no camera.
With the avalanche conditions getting a little hairy in the backcountry due to the mounting snowfall, Maci and I opted instead for a jaunt up Buttermilk resort, still a week away from its opening day. Here we are at the summit, where a kind gentleman had just finished his own climb and was willing to snap a quick photo.
A view of ominous skies and Highland ski resort falling away from Highlands Ridge. That's the Maroon valley to the right, the gateway to the Maroon Bells (America's most photographed mountains) and Pyramid Peak (world's tallest mountain*), none of which were visible on this day. That's also the route we took last fall on our hike from Aspen over Maroon Pass to the neighboring ski town of Crested Butte, chronicled in great detail here.
After a disjointed climb through some difficult snow conditions and a miserable descent, dog and owner needed some recovery time. Lauren walked downstairs to find this scene unfolding on the couch and was kind enough to grab the camera. Do I smell a Christmas card?
Currently, the Nitti family is making final preparations for their annual trip back to NJ for Christmas. I had suggested simply celebrating the holidays with our family via Facebook, but Lauren shouted down the idea.
People who live in the mountains tend to say -- ad nauseam, if I might add -- "If you don't like the weather, wait thirty minutes -- it'll change." This weekend we witnessed that phenomenon firsthand.
Thanksgiving morning dawned sunny and bright, so while the calendar dictated that it was the beginning of Aspen's ski season, it sure didn't feel like it around town.
Undaunted by the green landscape, I decided to head up to town and make some turns on Ajax. A quick shot of the current year's quiver. Each ski, like the clubs in a golf bag , serves a specific and vital purpose, with no overlap or redundancy.
Here's a quick view of the Little Nell from the gondola. As you can see, snowfall has been a rarity in the early season.
At the top of Aspen Mountain (Ajax) a ceremonial pre-first run photo. Behind my head and just to the right is Highlands Bowl, perhaps the best inbounds skiing in the continental US, with consistent 40 degree pitches for 1500 vertical feet. Just to the left of my head are the Five Fingers, backcounty pitches accessible from the top of Highlands Peak.
The skiing, as you might imagine, was awful. Only a few runs were open, and with hundreds of people eager to start their season scraping away the snow with every turn, it wasn't long before the conditions became downright scary. After about an hour of getting my legs under me, I made a hasty retreat to the safety of my couch.
As we settled in for dinner later that evening, storm clouds rolled in from the west, and before the last of the apple pie was consumed we had already accumulated nearly a foot of new snow in Aspen. This gave me all the motivation I needed to wake up early the next morning and take Maci for a climb and ski.
Applying skins to the bottom of my boards for the first time since April. For those of you unfamiliar with ski-mountaineering, skins -- when combined with a releasable heel on your binding -- allow you to climb on your skis without sliding.
I took the dynafits out for two simple reasons: they're really light and I'm woefully out of shape.
While there wasn't much new snow at our starting elevation of 8,000 feet, by the time we had ascended to 9,000 or so, Maci was up to her shoulders.
It was snowing heavily during the climb, and with visibility limited, most people chose to stick to the resort and Maci and I had this peak to ourselves.
Throughout the climb, Maci is free to roam ahead, frolicking and digging where she may. But when I call, she comes a-running.
Once we hit the ridge, the combination of cold and wind became too much for both of us so we decided it was time to do some skiing. As you can see, Maci gets a touch excited when we make the preparations to start heading downhill.
Once we start skiing, my main concern is keeping Maci from darting in front of me. Many a dog has been sliced open by a ski edge when they got a little too close. With the snow as deep as it was, this wasn't a huge concern as Maci is working so hard just to keep moving downhill, she doesn't have any energy to waste attacking my ski tips.
The dog and I made it downhill in one piece, even enjoying about 18 inches of powder for the first 900 vertical feet or so. All in all, not a bad start to the season.
Three weeks ago, Aspen held its annual ski swap at Lauren's school. The swap is a rite of passage for valley residents, as it offers an abundance of discounted gear just in time for the upcoming season.
Lauren, being the person she is, always volunteers to work the swap, while I, being the person I am, volunteer to use my spousal privliges in order to get in early and horde the best deals. We work well togther that way.
The swap started at seven, so Lauren hung around after school to work in her classroom. Meanwhile, I grabbed dinner with a friend downtown, with eyes on swinging over to the school right when the doors opened for the special "friends and family" shopping period.
Dinner ran a bit late, however, so I didn't make it to the swap until nearly 7:30. By then, shoppers were everywhere, and my wife was buried deep within their midst. I hadn't called her to tell her I'd be late, but rather than use my cell phone to track her down, I figured I'd start perusing the goods and when I ran into her, I ran into her.
As I turned down an aisle of clothing, I spotted Lauren about 30 feet away, near the end of the row. She was in mid-conversation, and hadn't yet noticed my arrival.
As I worked my way down the aisle, Lauren finished her conversation and turned towards me. She took a couple of steps, looked up, and our eyes met; and when they did, her face lit up with a look of excitement that's burned into my memory.
And that, in this year of so many miracles, both minor and major, is what I am most thankful for. That my wife, after all we've been through, after all she's endured, still looks at me the same way she did that first summer down the beach. Nothing has changed.
To be strong for your husband when he needs you is one thing; to not over time let that pressure and burden taint or diminsh the way you love him is another thing altogether.
Oh, and my dog likes to wear a wool hat with a brim when we're waiting for Lauren in the school parking lot. I'm pretty thankful for that as well.
It doesn't seem possible that its already been half a year since the surgeon opened up my head and clipped an aneurysm that was ready to rupture. But the calendar doesn't lie. Just look at all that's happened since May: the economy has collapsed, the once-promising Christian Slater sitcom has come and gone, and in a landmark, world-changing moment many skeptics believed wouldn't happen in our lifetime, the Phillies won the World Series. Oh, and we elected the country's first black president.
When you look at it like that, six months seems like plenty of time to recover from a little brain surgery. So now seems like as good a time as any to reflect on all that's happened.
First and foremost, it's awful nice to be alive. As Lauren and I look back on some of the things I was doing over those last few months prior to the diagnosis, it's a miracle the aneurysm didn't give out. From the 15,000 feet of climbing at the 24 Hours of Sunlight, to the climb and descent of Hayden Peak just 10 days prior to the discovery, to my run up the Arbonny Kittle trail the day BEFORE the diagnosis, the thing sure had ample opportunity to rupture, and if it had, there's a 70% chance I'd be gone.
So there's that. It's something I think about quite a bit because sadly, most aneurysm stories don't end so well. I was one of the lucky few that had advance warning, in my case in the form of a wicked migraine while out climbing with my dog one afternoon.
Then there was the surgery. We were given all the standard warnings and statistics regarding the potential for problems; including but not limited to disability and death. But my surgeon, as he's known to do, pulled through with a kick-ass job.
Two days after the procedure, as I lay in the hospital running though my own self-imposed, informal neurological testing, I realized that everything was still there. From my childhood phone number to the 1991 Final Four participants to Homer's alias while he's temporarily crashing at the retirement home (Cornelius Talmidge), it was all there, and for that I was grateful. My biggest fear going into the surgery was that I would come out and not recognize my wife, or even worse, recognize her but not be able to communicate. But fortunately -- very fortunately -- that wasn't the case.
Since the surgery, I have slowly progressed to my pre-operative state, but not in anything resembling a linear or predictable manner.
Three months after the operation, as Lauren and I returned to Aspen and the physical pain had finally diminished, I considered myself "healed." I was back at work full time, I was running every other day, I could even enjoy a cold beer or three if I so desired. By any clinical definition, I imagine I was indeed healed.
And that's precisely when the trouble started. Not in any tangible physical sense, but in a mental and emotional sense. In retrospect, I never really processed all that happened until the recovery was "complete," and when it hit me, it hit me hard.
I'd always fancied that if tragedy or adversity did find its way into my life, I'd handle it admirably. I was wrong. I let the fear of a recurrence take over my life for much of the fall, and the pain from the intense emotional overload -- both physically and psychologically -- was in many ways worse than the surgical pain.
But time heals all things. Well, time and a wife with infinite patience. Lauren, god bless her, has bore the brunt of all my weakness over the past few months, and she's carried me through this.
It's an interesting thing, love. On the one hand, if it weren't for Lauren, I probably would have spent the better part of the past few months curled up in the fetal position and sucking my thumb like Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber.
On the other hand, one could make the argument that it was the way I feel about Lauren that made the recovery so difficult. Before I met her, what did I have to lose? As I rejoined reality back in Aspen, the fear of a foreshortened future dominated my thoughts. And it had nothing to do with the fear of dying and death's effect on ME, but rather the effect it would have on Lauren and the sadness I would leave behind. There are few things in life as depressing as waking up in the middle of the night, looking over to the other side of the bed at the person you love with all your heart, and fearing that you won't be around to grow old with them.
But that's the price you pay, isn't it?
As the six month mark rolled around, Lauren and I reached the conclusion that the best way to put these fears to bed was to take some more diagnostic tests and prove to myself that this aneurysm was what the doctors said it was: a one-time, freak occurrence that while life threatening, had a permanent fix.
So last week, I walked into Aspen Valley Hospital, where this all began, and took an MRI and an MRA to test for any new aneurysms and make sure the healing was going according to plan. I was fully aware that the brain takes a long time to completely recover, and that as much as I felt "healed" in September, it will be a full year before I am truly back to my pre-operative state. Nonetheless, we thought a six-month check-up was warranted.
The results are in, and the news is happy. No new aneurysms, and my brain looks healthy and ripe with useless knowledge. The MRI did reveal two tiny areas of dead brain tissue, but I am expecting to hear from my doc that this is the inevitable by-product of the surgery. Plus, as the radiologist reading the MRI pointed out, I have no neurological deficit, so the dead tissue likely isn't impacting me in any way. Although come to think of it, I have been having some trouble with names lately. Oh, and I forgot to wear pants to work today. Boy was that embarrassing. But I'm sure it's a coincidence.
So while I don't consider this chapter of my life closed, we're definitely getting near the bottom of the page. I still get some pain on the surgery side, and it seems to be exacerbated by intense exercise. Not a great thing when the snow should start falling any day now and there's roughly 100 ski days in my immediate future.
Those are little things, however, and with these new test results the fear should soon start fading, and perhaps now I can fully appreciate the simple joy of being alive. That'll be nice.
Big things happening in Aspen Thursday night, as Lauren and I got dressed up all nice-like (read: I took off my hat) to attend the community theater's performance of Chicago.
I was a tad skeptical at first, as I had some other appealing entertainment options in the Jets-Patriots game and the Roaring Fork Avalanche Center's annual fundraiser. But love won out, as it tends to do.
All in all, I was more than a little impressed that a mountain town of 6,000 people was able to muster such a talented collection of actors, singers, and sexually confused teenagers. The show was a hit, and Lauren greatly enjoyed it.
But at the end of the day, I'm a simple man. I like my beer cold, my TV loud, and my musicals to feature apes run amok in a post-apocalyptic world.
Lauren and I took a brief hiatus from the demands of our amateur dog-fighting ring to welcome the Nitti parents to Aspen, Colorado. It was the first visit for Mary and Angelo, confirming my long-held hypothesis that if you want people over 60 to trust their lives to air travel, you'd better a) have grandkids to dangle as bait, or b) have recently undergone some form of major surgery, the recovery from which can be utilized as a guilting tool.
After a rather long travel day, the folks and I met Lauren in Aspen for some fine dining at Jimmy's. Here's my wife and Mary shortly after agreeing to share their entrees, providing immense relief to my mother, who had spent several agonizing minutes torn between the wild game and the chicken parm. Here's Mary and Angelo posing in front of the Maroon Bells on another cloudless autumn day in Aspen, looking respendent in the very attire they wore to their failed 1997 audition for the Blue Man Group.
A quick shot of a boy and his dog. Maci's proudly sporting her new harness, a gift from a local pet shop owner after our return this fall. As you may or may not have noticed, it's PINK.
/Looks over at dog. Shakes head in disgust. Dog appears indifferent.
The better part of the next two days were spent watching the Phils and putting my parents to work on various odd jobs around the house. By the time Tuesday morning rolled around, they couldn't wait to leave and get back to their minimum-wage gig as indentured servants to my sister. After dropping them off at the airport in Denver, I picked up my brother Mike, which as you know by now, led to this...
I returned home well after midnight Wednesday night, nearly two full days after leaving Aspen. As you might imagine, priority number one was to reconnect with my #1 girl.
Friday was the Phils' championship parade, an event 25 years in the making for one star-crossed city. The parade gave us two diametrically opposed -- yet equally enjoyable and memorable -- manners of celebration.
Which kind of person are you?
Are you a "baby commanding legion of fans=adorable" person?
Or a "me likey gratuitous use of the F-word" kind of person?
God bless Chase Utley. I'm fairly confident members of this 2008 team can legally kill people in Philly now.
In October, 2007, I had this to say about the Phillies:
As anyone who knows me well can attest, I'm a huge sports fan, but not a HUGE SPORTS FAN. I don't don jerseys or scream at the TV in sports bars, and my email address isn't 'COWBOYFAN1@hotmail.com. Then there's the Phillies. Try as I might, I just can't shake them. For as long as I can remember, a day hasn't ended between April and October when I haven't had to find the answer to the question, "Did the Phils win tonight?" More often that not, the answer has been no. As I'm sure you're aware, the Phillies recently lost their 10,000th game, the first professional franchise to do so. They've won ONE World Series in their 120-year existence. Then again, all that losing has made it easy to love the Phils. You can't get disappointed when you always expect the worst.
Jayson Stark, baseball writer extraordinaire, had this to say about the Phillies on Wednesday night.
"That's what baseball does. There are going to be people today, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year saying, 'I was blank-blank-blank when the Phillies won the World Series.' And that's pretty cool, to have a story of wherever they were when the Phillies won the World Series: 'I was in the parking lot. I was in the stands. I was at a bar. I was having dinner. I was coming back from a trip and I couldn't see it so I listened to it in the car.' And to me, that's kind of cool, because that's what baseball does for people. I just think that's why it's so special."
Agreed.
Wednesday night, I watched on as nearly three decades of futility and frustration culminated in a moment I'll never forget, as the losingest professional sports franchise in history shook off its "chronic disappointment" tag and won the 2008 World Series.
And as Mr. Stark points out, it's the manner in which I celebrated that long-awaited moment, even more than the victory itself, that will always hold a place in my memory.
I've always idolized my older brother Mike. That's just what younger brothers do. And growing up, Mike was about as big a Phillies fan as one could be. He collected their baseball cards, sported player cut-outs on the wall of his bedroom, and fostered an unhealthy obsession with Von Hayes.
So it was only natural that at the age of eight, I would declare my life-long allegiance to the Fightins', and out of that grew a bond that Mike and I have shared ever since. We've experienced a lot since then: some great seasons, some historically awful ones, signs of promise, and of course, the back-breaking 1993 Joe Carter moment that brought the two of us to tears. The one thing we hadn't seen, of course, was a world championship.
Neither Mike nor I are the most gifted "talkers." We both prefer to keep things bottled up, and as our lives have taken various twists and turns over the decades, the "heart to heart" conversations one would expect between siblings have never really materialized. But one thing we've always been more than happy to discuss is our beloved Phils.
During the season, we talk pretty much every day; always about the Phils. This year, I think I made my first "maybe next year" call to Mike a whopping THREE games into the season, but in my defense, the Phils had dropped two straight to bottom-feeding Washington and were trailing 6-1 in the sixth inning. They would bounce back and win that game, and our confidence followed suit.
I often feel sad for Mike. It can't be easy to be the eldest of three brothers, only to watch your two younger siblings and best friends move off and start life elsewhere. Our lives have changed so dramatically since we first became mesmerized by the sound of Harry Kalas' voice. But through it all, the moves, the distance, the marraiges, the children, the medical emergencies, we've always had the Phillies to keep us close when the distractions and demands of life threatened to pull us apart. Some of my fondest memories of this summer were those nights when Mike would stop by, as I struggled with my recovery from brain surgery, and watch a couple innings of the game with me. Sure, there were other things we could, and given the circumstances, probably should have talked about. But it was always the Phils, and we were both just fine with that. It's as if we knew that some day our dedication would be rewarded, and we'd have those shared moments to look back at and cherish.
So it came to be that Wednesday night, with the Phillies poised to win the first world championship I would ever witness, I shared a table in a crowded restaurant in Denver, Colorado with none other than my brother Mike. And together we watched history.
Amazingly, this wasn't some planned encounter with the hopes of sharing the Phillies' coronation. In fact, the string of odd coincidences that had to play out in order for the two of us to make it to that table border on the unbelievable.
My brother's never been to Colorado. He'll probably never come again. The guy avoids cities like Howard Hughes avoided Port-A-Potties. But this year, this month, he had the opportunity to attend a conference in Denver for two days, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. At the time he booked it, the idea that the Phils would be one of the last two teams standing was laughable.
Even as the Phils continued to rack up wins and advance, the odds didn't look good that we'd be able to share that final pitch. First and foremost, the Phils opened the world series as heavy underdogs to the Tampa Bay Rays, a dynamic young team that had just disposed of the defending champion Red Sox. With Game 6 originally scheduled for Wednesday night, Mike and I started the series hopeful that the Phils could find a way to muster at least two wins, so we could watch them play as the series moved back to Tampa.
But then a funny thing happened. The Phils, after splitting the first two games in Tampa, ripped off two straight wins at home. And with their best pitcher on the mound on Monday night with a chance to end 28 years of misery and avoid the return trip to Tampa for Games 6 and 7, Mike and I agreed via telephone that we would happily sacrifice a chance to watch a game together to have the Phillies end this thing in five, and at home. As the Phillies proved in the NLDS and NLCS, there is something lost in clinching a series on the road. The celebration is muted and seemingly held in a vacuum, 25 men rejoicing as 55,000 shuffle out of a quiet stadium.
So as Game 5 began on a cold and wet Monday night in Philly, that was the situation Mike and I faced. Either win tonight, and watch the city of Philadelphia explode in a fit of unfettered glee, or lose, and gain the chance to watch a Game 6 on the road together.
The rest, as you know, is history. Game 5 was suspended in the sixth inning -- the first time a World Series game had ever been suspended -- and suddenly Mike and I were in the midst of a perfect storm. He was on his way to Denver, I was going to make the 3-hour drive from Aspen, and together we would watch the Phillies improbably attempt to close this thing out at home.
As Brad Lidge's final slider of a perfect season cleanly evaded the bat of Eric Hinske, two lifetimes of blind devotion were rewarded. As I reached across the table and hugged my brother Mike, I thought of all the reasons I had to be happy: starting with the simple yet undeniable fact that after what happened six months ago, I was lucky to be alive to witness it.
To see the Phillies players laughing and crying and doing the things newly crowned champions do, and to have intimate knowledge of what an unlikely occurrence it was to have this group of guys earn this moment, was also extremely gratifying.
But as I looked at my older brother, and thought back to all we've shared because of a baseball team of all things, I quickly realized that it wasn't the Phillies winning I was grateful for, it was that this team, ALL of these Phillies teams, have given me something wonderful I could share with him.
And that is what Jayson Stark meant. The Phillies could win it all again next year -- hell, for the next fifty years -- and it will never matter quite like it did on Wednesday night. Because it won't be with Mike.
Aside from representing lyrics from my sister Karen's favorite Breathe song (free tube of partially used toothpaste to whoever knows the song title. You pay S&H!), the title pretty much explains what's been going on in Aspen since the last post. The snow has begun to fall with earnest, and with it the quality of the skiing has improved exponentially. I got the opportunity to poke around in the backcountry off Richmond Ridge last Monday, but alas, no camera.
With the avalanche conditions getting a little hairy in the backcountry due to the mounting snowfall, Maci and I opted instead for a jaunt up Buttermilk resort, still a week away from its opening day. Here we are at the summit, where a kind gentleman had just finished his own climb and was willing to snap a quick photo.
A view of ominous skies and Highland ski resort falling away from Highlands Ridge. That's the Maroon valley to the right, the gateway to the Maroon Bells (America's most photographed mountains) and Pyramid Peak (world's tallest mountain*), none of which were visible on this day. That's also the route we took last fall on our hike from Aspen over Maroon Pass to the neighboring ski town of Crested Butte, chronicled in great detail here.
After a disjointed climb through some difficult snow conditions and a miserable descent, dog and owner needed some recovery time. Lauren walked downstairs to find this scene unfolding on the couch and was kind enough to grab the camera. Do I smell a Christmas card?
At the top of Aspen Mountain (Ajax) a ceremonial pre-first run photo. Behind my head and just to the right is Highlands Bowl, perhaps the best inbounds skiing in the continental US, with consistent 40 degree pitches for 1500 vertical feet. Just to the left of my head are the Five Fingers, backcounty pitches accessible from the top of Highlands Peak.
