Utah

Hey guys.

Well, for starters, nobody got hurt, except for one fall I had and landed on my neck. Nothing broken, just a little stiff and sore.

My dad and I drove out last Tuesday night, leaving around 7:30. Long, relatively boring drive. I drove for the first 12 hours, and then my dad did the last 6 or so. We rolled into Salt Lake at about 2 PM mountain time. Basically spent the rest of the day sleeping.

Thursday was our first day of skiing. My grandpa showed up the day before, just a little after we got there. Then my uncle Bruce got in that evening from Seattle.

It was snowing up in the mountains, which made for better skiing, but poor visibility. After getting Bruce set up with his monoski, we took off. I must say, I was very impressed with his abilities. He made it look so easy. Like it took no effort for him. But it obviously did, because he only lasted 2 runs, as did my grandpa. He was also really impressive on the hills. Granted, he wasn't going very fast or doing anything too hard, but just the fact that he was out there, in good form, under control at 82 is pretty damn cool.

Now, for those of you that haven't skied before, 2 runs might not sound like a lot. But when you're in the mountains it is. Around my house 2 runs would last maybe 3 minutes without the chairlift time. But out there each run lasts at least half an hour before you get back to the bottom, so it's pretty intense.

The crappy visibility.



Bruce tearing up the hills.



My Grandpa doing his thing.



My uncle Keith following Bruce. (Keith is telemark skiing, by the way)



The whole group (minus Keith's kids, who were somewhere else on the mountain.)



Me shredding it up.



Unfortunately, there weren't many pictures of my dad, since he was taking them all. But this one is cool.



And finally, my view everyday. (From Keith's house)(Yes, that's me playing guitar)



Anyways, Thursday night my grandpa did a little presentation about where our ancestors came from. It was very well researched and presented. Although a little boring for me, until I started to know some people he was talking about. It was kind of hard to get interested in people from the 1800's that I've never heard of. But it was cool to learn more about my Grandpa's parents and grandparents.

Friday and Saturday were pretty much repeats of Thursday on the hill. Not much visibility. Although Saturday morning it was sunny, but around lunchtime it got cloudy and started snowing again. I think over the three days we skied, they got around 25 inches of snow at the mountain.

Now, I realized I never really talked about my uncle Keith in my last post. He's a very...intense guy. Try to picture the Marlboro Man, on meth (and smoking Winston's, since Keith only smokes Winston's). He's an ex-cocaine addict, a retired race car driver, been a ski bum for his entire life, and works as ski patrol at Snowbird (as well as about 15 other jobs. He runs the water treatment plant for Snowbird/Alta, something with the fire department at the Bird, and a bunch of other things that I don't know). He's always been balls to the wall, go big or go home kind of guy. Not exactly what I wanted to be around while skiing. But he was incredibly gentle the whole week. He stayed with Bruce the entire time, encouraging him, and making sure he didn't get hurt. He never made any of us do something we weren't comfortable with. It was a nice surprise. The whole trip it seemed like I was seeing a different side of him that I'd never seen.

That being said, on Thursday he made my dad and I go on the 'work tram'. Basically, the last tram that goes up the mountain for 'normal' people, is at 3:45. Then, around 4:15, a group of ski patrol go up and start the 'sweep' of the mountain, making sure everyone is off the hill. I'd never done this before, so it was exciting. But since it was the first day, and the first time in a while since my dad and I had skied on a real mountain, we were dead tired and just wanted to go home. But no. We went up, and then started skiing down all the hard stuff that Keith wouldn't go on with Bruce and my Grandpa. The skiing was great, and being the only two people on the mountain in view, probably a total of 15 people on the whole mountain, it was intense. I've never seen it that empty before.

Normally, when they find someone still on the hill, they make sure they're ok, and then send them on their way, so the patrol is always the last one down. But since my uncle is a ski patrol, the rest of the guys left us behind, so we were literally the last people on the mountain for the day. It was awesome! Once we made it down though, I could hardly walk my legs were so sore.

Anyways, we left on Sunday morning, around 11:30 mountain time. We decided we were going to stop in Thermopolis, Wyoming to go swimming in the hot springs and relax in the hot tubs. It was about a 6 hour drive from Keith's house to the hot springs, which we spent listening to music and talking about whatever. I'd thought about telling my dad then, but it didn't feel right, so I figured I'd wait and see once we got back on the road. After soaking in the hot tub and eating dinner, we got back on the road about 8 PM. About 40 miles past Thermopolis, we started driving up the Big Horn mountain pass. It started out fine, but quickly started snowing. Then the road turned to ice, and it made driving rather interesting. I was going about 25 mph the whole way up. Then came down. Trying to drive down a 7% grade on ice for 10 miles isn't fun. But we made it down eventually. We finally made it back to interstate 90 and drove the last little bit left of Wyoming to South Dakota. About this time I was getting tired, and it was about 1 in the morning. So I turned the wheel over to my dad and went to bed. I figured I could tell him in the morning.

About 4 hours later, I wake up to my dad rolling the window down and him saying, 'Hello Officer.' Oh great. I get up and look around. There were two semi trucks that had spun out in the middle of the road, and the cop was directing traffic around them. It had kept snowing since Big Horn, and the roads were pretty slick. I fell back asleep for about 20 minutes, only to wake up from my dad continually hitting the rumble strip on the side of the road that is supposed to wake you up if you fall asleep driving, so you don't go into the ditch. I figured it was a little windy, and he was just being blown around. But he kept hitting it every 10 seconds or so, so I looked outside. At best, you could see about 15 feet in front of the car. I asked him what he was doing, to which he replied, 'I'm using the rumble strip to figure out where I am on the road.' Oh god. Since he couldn't see, he'd touch the strip and then back onto the road, and then 10 seconds later do it again. So I said, 'What the hell are you doing? Pull the fuck over!'

'Oh no, we're about to drive out of it and it'll be fine.' So I pulled out his phone and looked at the radar of the storm. At the speed we were going, and the speed the storm was going, we weren't going to drive out anytime soon. So I told him that, and basically forced him to pull over at the next exit and pull into a gas station. He gave it, and crawled in back to get some sleep while I hung around and tried to check some of the blogs. It was about 6 in the morning by now, and we'd only made it through half of South Dakota. After about an hour I got out of the car and noticed that the snow had cleared up a bit, so I decided to start driving again. A minute or so later my dad woke up and I told him what was going on. He seemed satisfied and went back to bed.

The roads still kind of sucked, but the plows were out and it was getting better. Pretty soon I was back to driving 80mph and trying to recover some time. Around 10 AM we pulled into Sioux Falls, SD for gas. Sioux Falls is just on the eastern border of South Dakota and Minnesota. South Dakota is about 400 miles wide, and should only take about 5 hours or so to get across. But because of all the snow, it took us over 9 hours to do it. We weren't too happy about that, but glad to be out of it and still safe. And it was only about another 200 miles to home!

About half way between where we had stopped and where we got gas, my dad got a phone call from my mom, informing us that her friend with brain cancer, Mary, had died. My mom has been a big part of caring for her, and is also power of attorney for her. It was really sad, and we both wished we were home to be there for my mom. That put a pretty big damper on our moods, and I gave up thoughts of telling my dad. It just wasn't the right time. And since that happened, I'm glad I hadn't told him the night before either. Just too much stuff to try and process at one time. So my awesome plan of using the long drive to tell him failed. But for now, I'm ok with that.

On the Monday night before we left, I was over at Demian's house shooting the shit, and I had mentioned that occasionally Erik gets doubts about whether or not their cross country trip is worth it. Usually right after Erik spends a lot of money on something for the trip, he'll think that. But then he thinks about it, and realizes it is worth it. Well, Demian interpreted that wrong, and thought I meant that Erik didn't want to go. So, apparently, after I left Demian called Erik and confronted him about it. Erik assured him that he still wanted to go, and that everything was fine.

A little after leaving Sioux Falls, Erik calls me asking where we are. I told him, and he said cool. Then he said that he was going to trade his car for a Jeep Cherokee that night, and he was going to leave the title for his car on the counter so my dad could sign it. Ok. I asked what was going on, and he said he and Demian decided not to tow the camper with the El Camino, for fear of getting stuck without 4x4. Not only that, but the Friday before, Erik put his notice into work that he was quitting in May. So because of one little thing that I said, and was misheard, Erik quit his job, got a proper vehicle to tow, and they had set a leaving date of June 1st. And they've been buying tickets for festivals on the west coast that they want to go to, and now will have to if they don't want to lose that money. So they're actually, finally going! Bout damn time.

I guess that's about it. I've been spending the past couple days recovering and trying to get my sleep schedule back to normal, after spending so much time in the car. All in all it was a great trip, and I'm glad I went. I wish I could've told my dad, but it just wasn't meant to be, yet.

Sorry for the longness of the post, but a lot happened!

Hope you guys are well!

143

_Kevin