Skiing Is Utahded

Utah is cold. Boring, too. It reminds me of Connecticut, actually. Except that, this time of year, Utah is full of tourists. No one chooses to spend their vacation in Connecticut. Everywhere you look in Utah, there are statues and monuments related to the Olympics, as if to say, "We once were relevant!" They come off as a bit sad, like someone still displaying eir high school trophies. It's over, Utah. Quit living in the past and move on. Celebrate your other assets, like the Great Decent Salt Lake and Mormons.

I went downhill skiing for the first time in several years. As I see it, skiing is a combination of gravity, balance, and frostbite. Notice, nowhere in that description does the word "fun" appear. Up the hill. Down the hill. Up the hill. Down the hill. Shiver. What's worse is that it leaves me feeling sore. My calves, knees, and neck all ache. I overheard some parent telling eir kid that the reason people like skiing is because it feels good once you get to take everything off. Though it is satisfying to remove those boots at the end of the day, anytime you do an activity with the bang-your-head-against-the-wall-because-it-feels-good-when-you-stop effect in mind, your logic is clearly flawed.

Somehow, skiing has become the sport of choice of the affluent. In an odd state of events, you have to have money in order to afford inflicting this sort of activity on yourself. Between equipment and lift ticket costs, poor people cannot afford it; avoiding this torture seems to be one of the positives of destitution. Waiting in a lift line, I heard one parent get upset when ey found out eir kid had went to sit inside after one trip down the mountain. "I paid $200 for [em] to ski today!" Indeed, I would be upset at the wasting of money, too, but it should come as no surprise that a kid would prefer to enjoy the warmth of inside rather than hurting emself going up and down a mountain. Why is anyone spending that much per person anyway?!Perhaps someday the child will understand the elitism that skiing provides (this particular resort forbids snow boarders, or as I like to call them, "impoverished riffraff") and enjoy this haughty display.

Speaking of the rich and elite, I shared the slopes with a famous individual you will never guess. Well, you'll probably guess it if you noticed the picture at top and were waiting for her to be referenced in this post. The mystery celebrity was none other than Lisa Kudrow! I was pretty obsessed with her in my youth, even successfully campaigning for her to win "Favorite Actor/Actress" in my sixth grade year book. To give credit where it is due (and mainly because she would surely comment to point this fact out if I failed to mention it), Alison pointed to a woman and said, "Is that Phoebe?" "Who?" I asked. "From Friends," she elaborated. I looked at the woman posing for a photo. Though she looked like Lisa Kudrow, it wasn't until I heard her unmistakable voice that I actually realized it was probably her. Then I saw her kiss a much older man who I recognized as her husband. I'm fairly embarrassed that I could even positively ID her husband, the unfortunate result of years of watching tabloid TV.

The real adventure did not begin until dinner time. Driving to Main Street, we passed a Pizza Hut, at which point I jokingly wished we could eat there instead. We had reservations at a fancy restaurant and were seated in the back. When the waitperson asked us for drink, there was a collective cry for water. The next question was whether we wanted bottled or tap and being the resident miser, I chimed in first that tap would be fine. Though I was excited to eat a good steak, the $36 price tag was not too appetizing. I don't care how good it is, I'm not going to $36-enjoy it. A couple of the other younger patrons in my party complained that there was nothing they wanted to eat. Our round of tap water came, but we delayed in making our food order. Since there were reservations about completing this reservation, an informal vote was taken to leave the restaurant. My dad informed the manager, explaining that two of us were "sick." Just about then, I read the fine print on the menu that explained that since precipitation was down in the area, the restaurant was offering bottled water at affordable prices (which, if true, would be the only such item on the menu) in order to conserve water. In other words, not only were we assholes who were backing out of our reservation, but we wasted the tap water at that, leaving it untouched. Rather than making the walk of shame back through the restaurant, we literally snuck out the backdoor of a classy restaurant while no one was looking.

From there, we wandered Main Street aimlessly, looking for a restaurant that could seat us. I felt like the Virgin Mary finding no room at an inn, except the pain in my stomach was hunger and not the baby Jesus. More than an hour later, we still couldn't get a seat at even the most downtrodden of eateries; we put our name in on the waiting list at one place, again sneaking out the back exit when we changed our minds. Instead, we retreated to greener pastures: Pizza Hut. We were far too overdressed for the occasion and one member of our party was disappointed to discover you could not order wine. It was clear that half of us were not too happy to have this place be our final destination. At the salad bar she was warned not to eat from, Kate overheard a mother tell her young child, "You should be good, Daddy is not happy to be here." "Why?" asked the kid. "He wanted to eat at a nicer restaurant." Ah, just like us! A piece of advice, "Daddy": Save your moaning and your money for the slopes.