The One Where Maci Almost Dies, and More Simpsons Videos = More Threatening Emails From Youtube

I'm not much of a storyteller, but this one is just too strange to pass up.

Last week, the piece of shit lightly used previously owned Subaru my father sold me prior to running his dealership into the ground retiring broke down. I dropped the car off to be serviced in Glenwood Springs, a town 20 miles west of Aspen, and on Friday afternoon I got the call that it was ready.

My temporary housemate Poochie Brett, shown here posing seductively in front of Pyramid Peak, was kind enough to offer me a ride to the Springs to reclaim my car, and I happily accepted. As we were leaving the house, I felt the separation anxiety that befalls me everytime I leave Maci behind, so I invited her along. The three of us piled into Brett's Nissan Frontier, Maci resting comfortably on my lap in the passenger seat.

So there we were -- Maci, the dog with whom I have an unhealthy attachment, and Brett, the unwelcome guest to whom I'm fairly indifferent -- cruising down Highway 82 at 65 mph when BLAM-O!

The next thing I know, I'm kissing an airbag, with a death grip on man's best friend. As the car slowly cruises to a stop on the shoulder of the highway, I look over at Brett, who says simply "deer."

Now, far be it for me to accuse a 26-year old kid in an obnoxiously large truck of driving irresponsibly, but I feel the following video is a fair reenactment of our drive to Glenwood.

 

The worst seemingly over, Brett and I took inventory of ourselves (fine), the Canyanero Frontier (busted up), and the dog (losing her shit). As we exited the car, Maci decided she'd had enough of the current situation, and did her best to break loose. Luckily, I had a strong hold of her collar. Until, that is, her collar snapped.

Now free, my insane-with-fear pup sprinted away from the wreckage, running against traffic along the shoulder of the busiest highway the Roaring Fork Valley has to offer during its Friday afternoon rush hour. I gave chase, screaming fruitlessly and waving my arms like a lunatic at the cars buzzing within four feet of my dog.

As I watched Maci pull farther and farther away, I accepted that at some point, she would deviate from the straight line she was holding along the shoulder, giving her a 50% chance of heading into traffic where instant death awaited. Not only would my best friend die, I realized, but I would watch it happen, ensuring me a lifetime of heavy therapy sessions.

One hundred and fifty yards from the accident, Maci hit an intersection. If she went straight, she's get drilled. If she went right, she'd get drilled. Luckily, she turned left, into a parking lot we frequented on many trail runs over the spring and summer. By the time I reached the trailhead, Maci was nowhere to be found, but I eventually stumbled upon her, terrified and shaking beneath a tree.

We were eventually able to coax Maci into Lauren's car, and she curled up on the passenger side floor as Lauren, Brett and I dealt with the cops, filled out the necessary paperwork, and arranged for a tow. Two days later, she was like new, as evidenced by this photo of her standing triumphantly atop Buttermilk ski resort, with Pyramid Peak in the background.

If You Don't Like Pictures of Mountains, This May Not Be the Post For You

Facebook is a rather neat thing. It reunites lost friends and lovers. It provides a window to peoples' uncontainable insanity through awkward status updates regarding religion and relationships.  And most importantly, it proves once and for all that America's public school systems have left 98% of our country functionally illiterate.

It also has a kick-ass photo sharing function, so you may well have already seen these pics of my recent Aspen adventures. But now I'm adding narrative, which brings the photos to life! Enjoy.

Ten days ago, resident avalanche expert and all around swell guy Brian McCall got tired of passively waiting for the arrival of winter, and decided to do something about it. He invited me to join him on a climb and ski of Marble Peak, an 11,300 foot summit about two hours southwest of Aspen.

A view of our goal from our parking spot. Marble Peak's summit behind the trees.

Here's Brian doing what he does best: testing the snowpack for stability so we can avoid getting caught in one of these...

...a small pocket avalanche off the east face of Marble Peak's summit. The snowpack was in excess of 120cm at the top, and with the 20 cm of new snow bonding poorly to the existing snow, there were several signs of recent activity.

After 2,300 feet of mostly easy skinning, we arrived at the summit on a typical Colorado bluebird day. Here's a view towards Raspberry Peak, a line I've been eyeing up for quite some time but have yet to ski.

Buttery turns were found off the summit, a huge surprise for this time of year. Brian and I have made our first turns together three years in a row, and we've had good luck on all three occassions in finding unexpectedly good powder.

Brian reaping the rewards.

A final veiw back towards the summit. As you can see, we weren't the only ones with the idea to ski Marble Peak in recent days.

On Sunday morning, I took Poochie Brett out for a quick introduction to any self-respecting Aspenite's favorite form of exercise: going up.

The snow line was creeping ever lower, but I thought we could still get a decent hike in on a local trail, and start to acclimate Brett's legs and lungs to life at 8,000 feet.

Of course, no hike would be complete without Maci, as she led the charge up the 1,500 foot climb. We encountered some snow at the summit, which she used to cool off.

As I mentioned in my previous post, Brett is quite the photographer, and he lugged his equipment up the single track in hopes of finding some quality scenics. He succeeded.

Here's Brett the Jet with the twin summits of Mt. Sopris behind his left shoulder.

Maci making friends with the camera lens.

The day before Thanksgiving, Brian, Brett, two pooches -- Maci and Mickey -- and I headed out to Snowmass in search of soft snow.

I've gotta' say, having a photographer along on these trips is pretty cool. I would never have thought to snap this shot. They call this place Aspen for a reason, you know.

Mt. Daly in the distance.

Brian and I skinning up the western ridge of Snowmass. Brett getting the lighting just right.

A photo of our skintrack, the coolest aesthetic output of any backcountry adventure.

Mickey breaking trail, followed by yours truly, followed by Maci.

Early candidate for blog picture of the year in the "non-Ryan" category. Garrett Peak in the background.

Maci looking regal for the camera.

After two hours of breaking trail through boot-deep snow, I get to enjoy the down.

Maci getting after it, while still listening intently for lurking predators.

Finishing our descent as the snow turns thin.

One last hero shot of the pup.

After the big effort, a well deserved rest for a boy and his dog.

On Saturday, Brian needed to get up above treeline to check out the snowpack for his avalanche forecasting. We opted for the summit of Mt. Baldy, a 13,100 peak accessible from the backcountry gates atop Snowmass ski resort.

The summit of Baldy is the small, triangle shaped peak in the left-center of the photo.

Recent winds had scoured the ridge free of snow. Here's Brian making do with what we had.

Snowmass Peak, one of the Elk range's 14,000 foot summits, in the back center of the photo.

A shot of Capitol Peak, another of Colorado's "14ers."

A view of Garrett Peak from the ridge to Baldy.

Brian skinning the final stretch before we had to switch to booting. As you can gather from the pictures, the skiing was awful. Fortunately, no photographic evidence of my many falls on the windslab and breakable crust exists.

You know boys...they always want to be just like their daddies. Ryan has been rather jealous of my recent winter adventures, so Lauren and I dressed him in his burliest technical gear and stuck him in the fridge for three hours. Good times.

Our New House Guest is Half Joe Camel and a Third Fonzarelli

Judging by the ol' counter in the upper left corner of this blog, readership has slowed a bit lately. Perhaps I've alienated the childless demographic with the recent Ryan saturation. Or maybe the increasing fart-jokes-per-post ratio has turned off the cultural elite. Or maybe your you're all realizing I just don't write very good well, and as a result I'm loosing losing readers.

Regardless of the reason, I'd like to see it fixed. 

In theory, this bit of bad news should provide the motivation I need to improve my writing. Seek out some formal training. Maybe diversify my topics.

But I'm a lazy, lazy man.

So rather than work harder to improve my craft, I'll just look to my old friend television for inspiration. Teacher. Mother. Secret lover. 

Historically, sitcoms have attempted to boost sagging ratings by adding an unnecessary character in hopes of injecting new life into their stale programming. Happy Days brought in the Fonz. Saved By the Bell added that hard-ass chick, Tory. And yes, even the critically acclaimed Itchy and Scratchy needed a shot of Poochie the dog to reinvigorate their dwindling fan base.

Typically, these characters are nothing more than caricatures, cluttering up the scene and spouting contrived catch phrases at every turn. For example, when they were creating Poochie, the following directives were issued to the illustrator:

Creator: He needs attitude, attitude! Uh... sunglasses!

Consultant: Could we put him in more of a "hip-hop" context?

Krusty the Klown: Forget context, he's gotta' be a surfer. Give me a nice shmear of surfer.

Consultant: I feel we should Rasta-fy him by... 10 percent or so.

All Three: Oh, yeah, bingo. Yeah, that's it! There it is, right there! I love it!

The result was the rather "in your face" canine you see above. But let me tell you, Poochie created quite a stir amongst the Itchy and Scratchy faithful. It worked.

Taking a page from my favorite show-within-a-show, Lauren, Ryan, Maci and I are adding a little spice to our lives this winter and bringing in some new blood. My good friend Brett "the Jet" Friel -- lifeguard, budding photog, and collector of hilarious bumper stickers -- will be spending the winter in Aspen, and we're hopeful his experiences as a 25-year old single guy in a world class party town will spice up the blog.

What's refreshing about Brett, is unlike Poochie, he's no ridiculous caricature, born from some out-of-touch corporate desire to capitalize on ill-conceived requirements for "cool" like surfing and sunglasses and bad-ass attitude. He's a real-life, grounded, guy who...oh shit....

Perhaps you should ignore that last paragraph. Yes, that is Mr. Friel, apparently doing his best Poochie impression during a recent trip to Mexico.

In all seriousness, I'm extremely jealous of Brett. And not because he's younger, better looking, and judging from that picture, significantly more Rasta-fied than me.

I'm jealous because he's got the balls that I didn't at that stage of my life. To pick up and move to a ski town at his age on a whim, out of nothing more than a desire to experience a life he's always wondered about, is an act of courage I admire.

Look, I'm smart enough to know that I've got it pretty good. At 34, I'm living exactly as I've always dreamed, aside from the fact that Lauren and I don't spend our free time driving around in a van, solving mysteries.

But by no means was this a linear process for me. It has taken many steps -- some forward, many back, a few sideways -- for me to get from a twenty-three year old CPA at Arthur Andersen in Roseland, NJ to where I am today. And I'm pretty certain that if I had only possesed the cayones Brett has, I might have gotten here sooner.

Life is fleeting. This should come as a surprise to absolutely no one. As you're sitting in your cubicle or manning the assembly line down at the cracker factory, daydreaming of a different reality, the hourglass is emptying.

I don't mean to come off as preachy. Nor am I suggesting that people should spend every waking moment of every day pursuing their wildest fantasies. It's that type of uncompromising thinking that made the poor kid from Dead Poets Society shoot himself. We don't want that. 

No, real life doesn't work like that. Shit gets in the way. We have obligations and responsibilities and families and pressures that sometimes make it impossible to create seismic changes. I understand and respect that.

With that said, if there is somewhere or someone you'd rather be, and no compelling reason you can't make it happen, I'd implore you to at least have a plan. I may not have had any balls in my mid-twenties, but one thing I did have was a idea.  An image burned into my head of exactly what was important to me, and what I thought I needed in order to provide the best life for myself and the family I hoped to have some day. I kept that idea, that image, with me throughout the past decade, anxiously awaiting the one thing that would spur me into action. 

For me, it was all about the girl.

Once I met Lauren, everything fell into place. With her, I no longer harbored any fear of the unknown. Suddenly, picking up and moving to the mountains didn't seem impossible. If the town went bad, if my job went bad, I knew I'd still have her. She gave me courage. Unlike Brett, I didn't have the strength to go it alone.

I shamelessly admit my intent to live vicariously through Poochie Brett for the next six months. He's about to experience a winter he'll never forget, and I'm happy to be a part of it. When his life story is penned, the winter he spends as a young, single guy in Aspen won't make the first few paragraphs, but you likely won't have to flip too many pages to find it. This was his daydream, just as it was mine. And he'll soon be living it.

But our daydream likely isn't yours, and that's just fine. That's the coolest thing about daydreams: they're personalized. What's heaven to me -- living in a quiet mountain town two hundred miles from the nearest shopping mall -- would be hell to many. Maybe you dream of attending art school, or running your own business, or purchasing a really kick-ass watch. I've got no argument for that. I think it was Plato who said "The world don't move to the beat of just one drum. What might be right for you, might not be right for some." Smart guy.

Of course, these things don't come without risks. I 've taken them. Brett's certainly taking one. In all likelihood, you'll have to take one or two as well. If happiness were easy to come by, everyone would have it.

But you owe it to yourself to at least try. What's the worst that can happen?

Except for the whole Dead Poets Society thing, of course.

/As an aside, I think I've outdone myself with the Simpsons references in this post. I'm not sure there is an original thought in here. A shiny nickel to anyone who can count them all.*

* no nickel will be awarded