My Dog is Chelsea

On the last run of the last day, as thousands and thousands of skiers of all abilities were making the slow, tortuously flat journey back to the base via the only way down, I noticed a short little snowboarder pop out of the trees, cut across a catwalk, and burst down into the extremely crowded trough of the trail. “Crazy kid!” I thought to myself. I should’ve known he’d have a buddy.

As I made my way to the catwalk, a second snowboarder popped out of the trees at full speed and shot right at me. Luckily, I saw him coming and hockey-stopped my way out of what would have been a very serious (and bloody) collision. “JESUS CHRIST!” I shouted, in the middle of Utah. The kid caught an edge and fell to his knees. “I’m sorry,” he said, without much hint of actual remorse.

My first instinct was to throw in some four-letter words and call him insane, but the camp counselor in me took it down a notch. “OKAY! This is NOT a reasonable place to do that!” He was about 11 years old. “I’m really sorry,” he said again, this time with a little feeling. “It’s okay—just be careful!” and I skied off. Leave it to MDIC to really lay down the law. Not.

I told the story to my uncle at the bar when I got down to the bottom. “You should’ve known he’d have a friend,” he said. “Snowboarders—or at least ones who like to show off like that—they never travel alone.”

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Speaking of the bar, my family and I hung out there every evening after we got off the slopes. It was there we learned the term “Utarded,” which is how you best describe Utah’s archaic liquor laws—the same ones that require that draught beer contain no more than 3.2% alcohol. My mother ordered a Manhattan and the bartender delivered it in a tumbler on ice—with no marachino cherry.

“Oh! I wanted it up,” my mother said, with real concern in her voice. “And without ice!” My uncle assured her that he’d had one just like hers and it had been great. “Okay, I’ll drink it,” my mother decided. “But what about the cherry?”

The bartender’s response was priceless: she looked at my mother and smiled, and then brilliantly delivered a line she’s probably used more than once on tourists from New York City: “Honey, there’s a reason we call this place the Pig Pen Saloon.”

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At the bar on the last evening, while I nursed a slightly-alcoholic microbrew and my uncle had his apres-ski staple of a Stella with a shot of Irish whiskey on the side, I told him that in my normal (i.e. non-vacation) life, I don’t drink every day. “I just can’t handle that much alcohol,” I told him. “On the weekends, sure, but not every day.” My uncle put down his beer and looked at me like I’d just announced I’d randomly be moving to North Carolina. “Well,” he said. “That’s too bad.”