I woke up several times during the night, once around 12:50, again at 3:00, and again at around 6:00. I had a wake-up call scheduled for 7:00AM. The 3:00 wake-up was particularly annoying as I couldn’t fall back asleep for a while. I was having trouble breathing, having to breath through my mouth instead of my noise, which I hate. I adjusted the temperature in the room, actually turning up the air-conditioning hoping that might help my breathing. This bed has those real warm down comforters on them, which are generally too hot for me. And not in a good way.
I had coffee, a bagel and a half with cream cheese, and a hard-boiled egg for breakfast. I shaved, showered, got all the garb and equipment on, better organized today in terms of what I brought and where I stored it in my ski suit.
As I walked into the lobby to buy my lift ticket for the day, I ran into Jon. As it turned out the bus to Sierra today, where he was going, and I had decided against going, didn’t show up, and wasn’t coming until 10:00. He didn’t want to wait, so was heading to Heavenly, as I was. I bought my lift ticket, while he ran up to his room, and we met back on the bus to take us to Heavenly. We met up with Rob, who was in the same boat in terms of the Sierra bus, and the three of us got off the bus together.
I’ve met Rob two night now in the hot tub, and as we were walking up to the lift (Jon had stopped by the cashier to get a map), he put his hand out and said, “I’m Rob.”
“I’m John,” I said, “We’ve met a couple of times now.”
“Oh yeah!” he said. “You were sitting across from me last night in the hot tub. It seems I can only recognize people by the chest hair pattern; when they’re in their ski outfits I can’t recognize them. Sorry.” Too funny. Only a gay man.
Rob went to register for a lesson, and I proceeded to the lift, where I waited for Jon, who came within just a minute. The first thing we did was head to the top of the mountain where we could get some pictures with the lake and the snow-covered mountains in the background. We think we got some pretty decent shots, but it was very hard to see the monitor up there because it was so bright out.
I was a real idiot with the camera. I would get across from him, and try to zoom, and the thing wouldn’t zoom. I pushing the zoom in and the zoom out, and nothing’s happening. I ski across to him where he’s posing, he holds it up, pushes the buttons and it zooms. I do the same it zooms. I ski back to where I’d take the picture, try it again, nothing. I was getting so frustrated. Finally, I said, “Let’s take a picture of me with you getting it zoomed just right, and then I’ll take one with you from the same place with the same zoom. So that’s what we did.
About 10 minutes later as we were skiing it dawned on me what the problem was. What an idiot. When I would walk away from him to take the picture, when I was doing the zoom, I was looking through the view finder, and not the monitor.
Jon and I skied the morning together, and it was actually quite nice. We ski at pretty much the same level, so that made it a lot easier, and we’re both very accommodating. We each fell one time, too. My incident was on a blue slope, where I got some pretty good speed going, and came up on one of those “ridges” that you can’t really see over, that you always stop before to see how steep it is on the other side of it. Well I didn’t. And it was. I slid down on my back for probably 20-25 feet, my skis and hands up, so no damage.
A little bit later, this snowboarder was with a friend who was skiing, and they got right near us, in a real narrow area, and the snowboarder said to his friend, “Give my your pole, and pull me.” The friend did, and he pulled him right in front of me. The snowboarder lost his balance and fell right in front of me.
I was right on him. I watched my ski in horror heading right for his head; he turned his head, and I saw my ski slice his neck open in my mind. It just missed him.
“Are you all right?” I asked him as I got past him and turned to him.
“Oh I’m just fine. Sorry about that, man.” Kids.
We stopped for lunch at the East Peak Lodge. I got the 1/3 Pound Cheddar Cheese Hamburger Combo for $11.95. This consisted of the burger, your choice of a small bag of Lays Potato Chips or Nachos Cheese Flavored Doritos, a soft drink or bottled water, and a dessert cookie or candy bar. I chose the Doritos, a bottled water, and a white-chocolate macadamia nut cookie. With tax, this came to $15.40. Just before we left after lunch, this nice-looking, well-built guy was standing not far from us, and looking our way. Jon was really hot for him, and making comments about him. Suddenly, he comes right over and sits down next to me, on the other side of Jon.
“Are you guys here for Winterfest?” Code words for, “Are you gay?” Jon said yes, and then asked if he (Jon) detected a slight accent. “I live in Singapore,” he answered. He was not at all Asian, however, and I found it odd that he didn’t add, “But I’m from…”
We introduced ourselves. His names was Bruce. He was staying at the Holiday Inn Express, which is literally next door to our resort. Jon invited him to our hot tub after skiing. As nice as he looks, he’s not really my type. His body hair is not dark, and he’s just way too out of my league. I don’t like setting myself up for that kind of thing at all. I always think about how inadequate I would feel about my body if anything did happen with someone like that. I was happy to let Jon pursue.
It got so ridiculously hot in the afternoon, that I was skiing with no gloves, and my ski suit opened down to the waist. Tomorrow, I am definitely skiing in shorts. I saw at least three people skiing in shorts today. Whoohoo. Some time during the afternoon, I lost one of the gloves I had put inside my suit, which was now open to the waist. I thought I lost it on the only black diamond run we did in the afternoon, which was great by the way. We did a second run to see if it was laying out anywhere obvious, but it wasn’t.
Just as we got on one of the lifts, Jon looked back at the end of the line, and saw Bruce getting in the line. On the way up the lift he said, “Maybe we should just hang out at the top for a few minutes when we get up there.”
We did. After several seats of folks got off, I said to Jon, “What’s he wearing? Do you remember?”
As fast as you could snap a finger he said, “Black pants and a blue jacket.”
Two seats later this guy with a blue jacket comes into view. “Is that him?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Yeah, could be,” Jon says, as the folks on the seat are getting up out of the chair. Kaboom, there goes the guy in the blue shirt, flat on his ass.
“Oh, that can’t be him,” we both said, as if we didn’t want to ruin the god-like qualities we had already assessed him.
Two seats later, he comes the real Bruce, who spotted us immediately, even before he got off the lift. He skied right over to us, and we exchanged pleasantries. Before he left, he said to us, “You guys gonna get a beer at the California Lodge before heading back?”
We didn’t commit to it, and left it without setting a specific time, or a specific place to meet.
We stopped skiing at around 3:30, and got out to the parking lot just in time to catch the shuttle back to Lakeland, which had been waiting and was about to leave.
I got into the room, stripped my ski stuff off, poured me a big old bourbon and diet coke, and took my ass to the hot tub. Glorious. There were only about five guys in it by then, and it felt so good. Jon came shortly, and then it filled up as people began to return from their day of skiing.
After about 30 minutes or so, who should come strutting around the corner in his Speedo. Flawless. Well flawless in form. It looked to me like he trimmed his body hair, which is a huge turn-off to me. Jon made his way to sit next to him in the hot tub, and made conversation with him. I could never really discern if Bruce was interested or not. At one point, Bruce went over to the (heated) swimming pool, and took a dip with this other guy, who I thought was gorgeous (Latin-looking, thick black chest hair, etc.), and then they both returned, sitting on opposite sides of the hot tub, so it looked like no interest there either.
Jon had to leave at about 5:00 to get ready for the activities tonight, which consists of dinner and a comedy show. All of these activities he’s been going to each night (last night it was dinner and dancing on that riverboat cruise), are part of the Winterfest VIP Pass that you can buy for, I think it was, $150.00 for the whole week. I never get those things, and especially wouldn’t this year as I was only there four of the seven days. Even if I would have been the whole week, though, I wouldn’t get them. I’m too tired at night to do all those things.
And this is a “for instance” of what I don’t want to happen. On Wednesday night, Jon was up and out until 3:00 in the morning. He got up at 7, and on 3 hours sleep, went to Heavenly and skied one run, then sat and watched the Speedo contest. He said he felt so bad on that one run, he was tired, and his legs were shaky, and he ended up not skiing the rest of the day. So, he wasted on day’s ski pass on skiing one run. That is so not worth it to me. I come here to ski. You can party at home any time you want to.
My plan tonight is to finish up the rest of my post cards, and possibly meet the guys for an hour at “Faces,” which is the only gay bar here in town. I feel like I need to take a nap if I’m going to do that, but also feel like if I fall asleep, that will be the end of it for the night. Oh well. We’ll see.