As I was skiing in Utah this past week, I sat in wonder at the amazing views and wondered why in the world we live in the arctic Midwest. Seriously, Travis could have moved anywhere when we moved to Indiana. It’s a struggle to figure out why we moved to Indiana. Well, it’s a bit late for speculation now. We are settled and actually mostly like it here. It’s just these polar blasts. When I wasn’t wondering why I don’t live someplace where I could ski every day, there were a few other things I noticed by looking around.

First, there is some brand of ski pants that has a butt crack zipper. It is directly on top of the butt crack. I saw a full grown man in these snow pants. I had to wonder if it is less work to unzip a zipper on your backside or just pull your pants down. And it seemed a bit risky, like he could deposit undesirable material on that zipper and it would be tough to clean. And quite frankly, I don’t feel like I’m challenging myself on the slopes if I don’t take a tumble or two in the snow. If it’s clogged with snow, that zipper could be tough to budge. And I don’t want to do the potty dance in ski boots.

The second thing happened on the chair lift. Since there were three of us, we usually had an extra person riding up with us, since most chair lifts are quads. Usually they were locals, and usually we chatted happily with them as we ascended the mountain. One time though, I was commenting on the pain in my shins (thank you rental boots and my own bad form). I commented, “My shin is in so much pain. He’s in screaming pain.” Both Krish and Melissa started laughing hard. We had had some wine at lunch and were a bit goofy. They said, “what, your shin is a guy.” To which I responded, “I have male parts, female parts. My shin happens to be male.” Of course, this was met with more laughter. Oddly, on this one time up the mountain, we didn’t speak to our chair mate. In fact, he looked like he would have jumped off the lift mid-mountain if there was an opportunity to do so. Our conversation continued in the same vein the entire time. That was the longest lift ride for our fourth guest.

On the second day, we met a local woman on the chair lifts who warned us of the weekend traffic back into town. She said that everyone leaves the hill around four, and the traffic on the one, two lane road back into town is awful. It could take us two hours to go ten miles. She said it’s called the red snake because of the long line of tail lights. She even told us not to ride the red snake, and leave before 3:30. We were like a group of frat boys, howling how red snake means something different in the Midwest, and it would be best not to google it without parental controls on. Of course, she got the last laugh (even if she didn’t know it) when we were stuck in traffic for three hours to go the ten miles back to our rental. We were on a steady pace to make it in two, but then there was an accident ahead of us. So we sat completely still for an extra hour and contemplated peeing on the edge of a mountain with a line of headlights on us. Looks like we learned a lesson about riding the red snake Utah style. And we left the ski hill earlier the next day.

Enjoy your Wednesday everyone. I’m still adjusting to being home and having to go to work. I daydream about living somewhere that would allow me to ski every day. But that day is not today.