Yard Sales

Nowadays, yard sales evoke an image of desperate suburbanites selling off their kids' hand-me-downs in a last-ditch effort to avoid foreclosure. In fact, I recently read an article about California communities that were compelled to enforce little-known ordinances limiting homeowners to 2 yard sales a year. Apparently, there were so many yard sales going on that traffic was backing up and causing other neighborhood disturbances. Have these people not heard of e-bay, the world's biggest purveyor of useless crap?

Actually, that's not fair. There is good stuff on e-bay. Ms. Demosthenes, my beautiful and intelligent girlfriend, recently purchased a Bose iPod docking station from e-bay. Assuming it actually shows up, it was a great purchase, since she got it at almost half the retail price.

The spike in traditional yard sales aside, the term "yard sale" has a different connotation. Allow me to explain.



Before I was the unemployed pseudo-lawyer you all have come to know and love, I lived in Colorado. If one lives in Colorado, one becomes a skiing connoisseur, just as if one lives in New York, one becomes a pizza and bagel connoisseur. You can't help it. By dint of merely living in Colorado, you qualify for something called the Colorado pass, which, for a minimal fee, grants the bearer unlimited access to some of the finest skiing on Earth. I used to ski Vail 10 times a year, never mind Winter Park, Aspen, Copper Mountain, Breckenridge, Keystone, A-Basin, Beaver Creek or Snowmass. 1000's of miles of trails, feet of powdery snow, a ski season that lasts from November til June, and all within a 2 hour drive! People say that money can't buy happiness. That's bullshit, because money buys a Colorado pass, and I defy you not to smile when you wear your Colorado pass.

So, back when I lived in Colorado, I took my friend Barry skiing. Barry was from Kansas. If you haven't been to Kansas, don't bother. I'll illustrate it for you here: __________. There. That's Kansas. Flat. Add several million cows and tractor trailers doing 88 mph, and you pretty much have it. Suffice it to say, there are no mountains in Kansas, meaning Barry wasn't much of a skier. Barry skied like a newborn caribou first trying to stand up. He was wobbly and slow, and you kind of wanted the wolves to put him out of his misery.

I, on the other hand, was a three-year skiing veteran - there wasn't terrain I couldn't handle, a black diamond I couldn't ski, or some fresh powder I couldn't shred. [FN 1] For the morning, I was happy to stay with Barry, but as the day progressed and he didn't, I really itched to let loose, build some speed, and hurl myself helter-skelter down some tough terrain. However, at that moment I was inching down a "green" beginner's hill with Barry. This trail was, at best, flat. If you brought your children to it for some sledding, they'd roll their eyes at you and sit in the car. But in the distance, I saw an adjoining trail: a blue-black leading to a black diamond. Oooo. I slid to a stop and turned to look at Barry turn wide S-turns down the "slope."

He approached slowly and as he came close he put his skis into a perfect V-shaped snowplow to slow down. Then he crossed his skis, fell over, rolled once, and bounced into my legs. "Sorry," he said as he wiped the snow from his goggles. I helped Barry up, got him dusted off, and said, "Hey, I'm going to split off real quick." "Oh, uh, ok," said Barry, clearly thinking he'd probably just die Sonny Bono style on the next turn.

"It's fine," I said. "You just stay on this green trail, and take it slow to the bottom. I'll meet you by the lift, and we'll go grab lunch." "Ok," Barry said again, and I watched him wobbly-knee it down the trail.

Finally free from my anchor, I looked around. It was glorious - snow-capped peaks ringed heavily forested mountains veined with ski trails, which threaded their way into the distance. The sun hung in a clear blue sky. The mountain had 14 inches of fresh powder, and there was almost no one on it. If John Denver weren't dead, he'd have been plucking his guitar at my side. Time to ski!

I squared my shoulders to the slope and began poling to build speed. A few speed-skater-like kicks, and a few more strokes with the poles, and the wind was whistling past me. I aimed at the blue-black trail. As I got closer, I could see there was a slight upward lip leading from the green trail to the blue-black. 'Awesome,' I thought. I could jump off the lip like a ramp and really barrel down the blue-black trail.

I tucked down into a ball to reduce drag and build speed, as much speed as I could. I zoomed straight at the upward lip and got ready to jump when I hit it. The hiss of my skis across the snow blended with the whistle of the wind in my ears. I jumped as high as I could when I hit the lip.

This was a mistake.

As I jumped, I looked down to check my landing. Below me were nothing but moguls - bumpy mounds of snow that a skier must skillfully and quickly thread to avoid falling. At high speed like I had, it took Olympic-caliber athletics to avoid broken bones. I was not an Olymipic athlete.

Nevertheless, despite my lack of elite skiing prowess, in times of stress the human mind is capable of marvelous things. You'll often hear athletes or soldiers or performing artists talk of time stopping or slowing as events unfold before them. This happened to me at the moment I hung suspended over a field of demonic little moguls, each one a land mine threatening broken limbs and brain damage should I tumble over them. 'Ok,' I thought, 'you can do this. Take the impact with your legs, slow down, and you'll be fine.'

I braced for impact, ready to flex my legs and turn through the first mogul. I'd bounce through a mogul or two, then slow down and stop. I'd be fine.

Unfortunately, my mind was nimbler than my body. I hit the first mogul and skipped right off the top of it. There was no cushioning of impact, no turn, no nothing. My skis hit the second mogul, my teeth clacked shut, and my skis crossed. For those who don't know, crossing your skis is bad in the same way that having your car's brakes fail is bad - high speed impacts will ensue.

I felt my skis eject their bindings. I used Volant skis at the time, which are stainless steel and basically a pair of six foot blades. They flew up and hit me as I went face first into mogul number three.

Feet head feet head feet head feet head feet head I went down the mountain. When I came to rest, I was face down in a pile of snow. I was still wearing my goggles, but they were full of snow. I rolled over and reached a mittened hand to my face and pulled the goggles off. My hat was gone. I wiped snow from my goggles, and tried to identify my injuries. Hm, puncture wound in left arm. Skinned knees. Bleeding gash in right shin. Buzzing in ears that wasn't there before. I tried to stand, then threw up.

As I got to my feet and wiped my mouth, I heard this: "Hey man, you all right?" I waved at the snowboarder standing on top of the lip I had just leapt from. "Dude, man, that was awesome!" he exclaimed. "I've never seen anyone yard sale like that before."

Ah, there it was. "Yard sale": when a skier or snow boarder wipes out so completely and thoroughly that all his gear is scattered across the mountain as if laid out for a yard sale. And a yard sale it was. My skis, poles, hat, and backpack were all over the place. Actually, I couldn't initially locate one pole. I eventually found it in the trees alongside the trail. In my hazy shock-to-the-head but glad-to-be-alive state, it took me some time to gather and inventory my possessions.

By the time I made it to the bottom of the hill and found Barry by the ski lift, the puncture wound in my arm and the gash in my leg were really quite painful. I wasn't sure I had a full afternoon of skiing left in me. Plus I thought I should probably do something to prevent infection. "Hey Barry," I asked, "what do you say to getting lunch and then just heading to the bar?" Alcohol was good for infections, right?

Barry looked at me like a murderer that just got sentenced to community service. His eyes lit up, he smiled, and said, "Oh, heck yeah. I'd love to get off the mountain about now." "Perfect," I said. "There's a place on the highway with dollar tacos and two-dollar Coronas. Ok by you?" "Ok by me," Barry said.

And that explains some of the scars I have. Stay tuned to hear the tale of my bloody battle with a dirt bike, some pointy rocks, and cacti. The end.



[FN 1] I was not always such. The first time I tried to ski in fresh powder, I went 4 feet, crossed my skis, ejected from my bindings, and tumbled down the mountain. It took me an hour and fifteen minutes to find my left ski, which was buried under the snow somewhere.