Okay, I'm not gonna let this week slip away without writing some shit down. I got home early from
work, and I was thinking about going snowboarding but I'm still pretty sore from yesterday, so I'm just chillin' at home. I finally have a chance to smoke a bowl (only a few days left before the Great Celibacy begins…), throw in some Morcheeba and think about the last 7 days. As weeks go, this was a pretty fuckin' good one!
Last Sunday I talked with Fritz, the Manager at French Broad outpost at
NOC, the whitewater company I work for. I had been waiting to talk to her for a while about what exactly I was going to be doing this season, and I really wanted to get the Head Guide spot. I was pretty sure it was mine, but I would have been supremely bummed if it didn't work out. Fortunately, everything worked out, and I'll be large and in charge starting April 8th. Other than the opportunity to
- I love Morcheeba when I'm high -
tell other raft guides what to do, and a long-awaited absolution from lunch prep responsibilities, the best part is that I'll be making like $9.50/hour. That's way below the poverty line in most places, but when you get paid that much to take people down the river, you feel like Bill Gates. Room and board runs like $200/month and I'll be working 40-50 hours/week for six months which equals $$$. That's a good thing, 'cause those Japanese lessons are not cheap. Maybe I'll just find some poor Yale student to tutor me for a few weeks.
The big minus is having to give up getting high. I'm studying up - by studying I mean looking at the cover of the manual - for the CDL test I have to take so I can drive the bus. No denying that learning how to drive the bus will suck, but if I'm getting paid to learn, then I'm sure that's motivate me to get off my ass. Still, it's damn near impossible to be a raft guide and not get stoned at some point during the summer. We live in the woods next to a river in a town called Hot Springs, tucked in this valley in the middle of the Appalachians! Bottom line, though, is I never want to find myself staring at that little opaque DMV urine receptacle, crushed by the realization that I'm about to piss away 3 years of the best job I ever had. So, I'll just have to drink a lot. It's fucked up that you can burn away half your liver bingeing out on JD and no one cares, but smoke a joint and suddenly your life comes crashing down around you, and all because John Ashcroft thinks pursing the drug war is a good idea. What a retard. Being in NC it'll be hard not to pick up a cigarette now and again either...and again...and again, and again, and oh shit.
The icing on the cake is that Will is the other new Head Guide which is soo fucking awesome. Will's a great guy. We did trees together in Atlanta last year, and it'll make all the difference in the world being able to talk with someone who knows how shitty things can get when you're in charge of 40 hung-over guides and about 1000 fat, weak, stupid motherfuckers dressed up with raft paddles and stuffed into these bulky orange PFD's. Knowing Will is by my side through it all gives me the confidence to go into this season expecting to find the best experience I have ever had. So, Sunday was good.
Monday and Tuesday were whatever. On Wednesday I finally got my shit together and get hooked up with an online broker. I had to put $500 in, which seemed pretty reasonable to start with. I pretty much split it between ATI and Microsoft. Yeah, Microsoft. Financially it's a really good thing to pick up right now, but there's no denying the toxic slick of self-hatred I now feel. I'm pretty opposed to most of what Microsoft represent as a corporate entity, so profiting by its success is undeniably hypocritical, but when I'm 65 and I break my Roth, I'll be more than happy to commit the remainder of my time on this planet to assuaging the lifetime of guilt and rebuilding my good karma.
- Y'all should download some Blue 6 -
Zap ahead to Thursday. After a couple weeks of steadily warmer weather and the inevitable mushifying it brought, out of nowhere came this slap in the face from winter and it dumped like 8" of snow all over CT. Everyone was bitching about it, but the moment I heard Jeff Fox talking about something from Florida colliding with something from Canada over my head, I was stoked! I finally started snowboarding this winter and I had one last chance to play with some real snow. This opportunity was especially acute since the last time I went out the snow from the honker 2' storm a couple weeks ago had melted and refrozen and turned the slopes into wet concrete. I went out for like 15 minutes and proceeded to wipeout harder and more painfully than I ever had before. It sucked. At least the girl at the front felt bad for me and gave me my money back.
I left work around 1:30 and got to Powder Ridge at 3:00. When I got there, there were only like 30 other people on the slopes. Everything was 100% powder. I was pumped to finally experience powder. In Atlanta, Will talked all the time about "the powder" in Idaho. His eyes would stare off somewhere 2000 miles away as he told me about rippin' through the powder so fast it would lacerate his face and create this huge rooster-tale behind him as he shot down the mountain. The hardest part, he said, was getting up if you fell 'cause the snow was so deep. I'm sure being at the top of the Teton's didn't detract from the experience, either. So, I was ready to see what this shit was like, even if it was only 8" deep. Straight up, that shit is hard to move in! My board kept sinking into it, and you have to keep the front tip up or the board buries and you wipe out. I was struggling for a while, but by 5:00 enough people showed up to pack it down a little, and then it was awesome!
It had been a while since I was last out there (8-10 days) so I was a little tight at first, but by 7:30 when I left, totally exhausted, I was making it down the intermediate run without falling or just skidding the whole way. I *really* wanted to stay, but my legs were throbbing and shaking and my arms ached bad from getting dragged around when I did eat it. While I was waiting in the lift line right before one of my last runs I saw this 9-year-old girl fall off the lift from about 10 feet up! She did a complete face-plant in the snow which, I should add, was glacial beneath the new snow. She didn't move for like 10 seconds. By the time the lift ops got to her she was getting up and it turned out she was fine. Pretty freaky though. I took it as a sign and decided to qui while I was ahead. I'm so glad Will got me fired up enough to get the equipment and start shredding on my own. Snowboarding is like nothing else I’ve done - the experience of carving through the snow down the side of a mountain is absolutely amazing.
So, now it's Friday. I'm kickin' back in New Haven. I'll be cruising up to Amherst tomorrow, and hopefully I'll get a chance to hang out with Mike. He just got into Harvard medical so he's basically ruling the world right now. He's dating this 21-year-old girl Stephanie who’s a Harvard grad student from Florida. The kicker is that she was planning to get engaged to someone else before she met Mike 3 weeks ago. Now she's sucking his dick and, again, he's ruling the world. He managed to skate over the whole Jamie thing too easy. This bubble's gonna break sometime, so I hope he enjoys it now - shit, I know he is! Despite his protests to the contrary, the moment Harvard signed his acceptance letter there was no way he would go anywhere else. Whatever discussion he maintains about the subject is just Mike going though the motions so he can say he went through the motions. Good for him, though. He's an amazing guy and I value my relationship with him as highly as anyone I have ever met.
Okay, I'm starting to sober up and the mp3's are looping, so it's time to find some basketball and drink a beer.
Peace.
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aweiss's journal
