And Baffle the World Against All Odds and Common Sense
By J. Lee Austin, MD
Those of you playing along at home may have detected a recurrent theme running through my gripping tales of death defiant capers. In the psychiatric journals I think they call it Chronic Intractable Imbecility. Today’s yarn abides the pattern, so anyone hoping for another cheap laugh at my expense, pop your corn.
College kids are not typically known for their incisive decision-making acumen, especially the male half of the cohort. To wit, let us harken back to that fateful day in 1978 when yours truly and two other dim bulbs decided on an adventure. Yep, the hapless Stephen F. Austin University students without money or much income at all got a powerful hankering for some snow skiing. They heard all the kids were doing it. It was full speed ahead, ignore the torpedoes.
J. Lee is a contributor to Crystal Beach Local News, and is the founder of The Good Help Network, a reader-supported publication.
If it had just been a matter of being dirt poor and being forced to scrimp on literally everything, things would have been challenging enough. What made it full-on torturous was the fact that my fellow travelers were so ridiculously immature in their incessant childish squabbling that even a first grader would have smacked them both upside the head and admonished them with, “Grow up monkeys!” They were awful. Kinda like toddlers, without the poopy diapers and screaming otitis. Lucky me. On a stick.
There was no respite from the bickering boneheads as we rode three abreast, shoulder to shoulder, bolt upright on the rigid bench seat of our single cab truck, for seven hundred and fifty miles. On the plus side, I only had to endure the petty niggling of idiots-in-stereo for 13 hours. So I had that going for me.
The good news is that we had a camper shell on the back. The bad news is that it was our only sleeping quarters. Three fully grown men bunking together in the bed of a pickup in butt freezing weather was moronic enough, but doing it without the benefit of a daily shower to rinse the smoking funk of campfire beanie weenies permeating our clothes and hair, was beyond dopey on the ropes.
Dumb and Dumber had both skied before, but I was a total snow virgin. In blue jeans even. Fashionable water-resistant skiwear was just a gleam in a young man’s eye. And it would have been nice to take some lessons, but lacking the requisite nickels to rub, I opted for the much more affordable, Train Yourself … to death … approach.
Without the basic knowledge of turning, let alone stopping, I was at the mercy of the mountain, which proceeded to beat me like a drum-headed stepchild. Consecutive crashing is not much of a technique, but I employed it with great fervor and passion nonetheless. When a 5 year old punk stopped to ask if I was okay, I fumed and began to question my strategy.
With my big Bon Jovi hair and Grizzly Adams beard entirely encased in a thick shell of re-freezing snow and ice, I was an abominable fright of a sight. After an hour of me thrashing the bunny slopes into submission, the geniuses reckoned I had enough practice.
“C’mon Johnny, let’s go to the top!”
So against my better judgment and still with no discernible skills, I joined the frolicking pinheads on the big lift. Intimidated soon became embarrassed when my ugly dismount turned into a yard sale of scattered equipment. The guys waited patiently while I gathered up my belongings and wits.
“Where to, boys?” I squeaked.
Anyone with half a neuron would have gleaned my gut wrenching incompetence and guided me towards the nearest extra-wide and gently sloping trail. But no, my brilliant truck-bed roomies headed straight for the greatest danger on the mountain … the tree trails.
I was able to follow along for a short bit, but as the snow grew deeper and deeper, my simmering panic grew wider and taller. With the fresh powder suddenly knee deep, I couldn’t see my skis anymore. This mattered not a whit since I had only rudimentary control over them anyway.
Zooming recklessly out of control through a beautiful stand of hard aspen trunks, I caught an edge. Several edges actually. I closed my eyes and would have tucked and rolled had I had a moment. Pressed for time, I just rolled, utilizing the ever popular keister-over-teakettle method.
When I finally stopped crashing, I opened my eyes, which were one literal inch from the white bark of death. I wore no helmet of course, but even with one, an impact at that speed would have used me up like a mayfly on a bumper.
So … thanks guys. With friends like that, I was wishing for enemies. On the third day of insanity, I announced to Heckle and Jeckle that I was going home ahead of schedule. As in right now. Judging by the shock on their faces, hitchhiking from Ruidoso to Nacogdoches was quite the radical move to make. I must have had a fork sticking out of me … they could tell I was done. Adios pendejos!
So after belching my eggs and grits, I stepped boldly out onto the highway. With the high altitude wind howling and the gravel strafing the side of my suitcase, I grabbed the brim of my Stetson and poked the other thumb out into the cold, thin air.
Sure enough, it took a couple arduous days, several really long nights and lots of random carpooling with some of nature’s scariest characters. The closest I came to actually jumping out of a moving car was outside the dusty dunghole of Monahans, where my driver proceeded to startle me with a ribald description of a spontaneous threesome he had enjoyed with a hitchhiking couple he had picked up the day before. The creepy story got even creepier thanks to the nervous waggling of his knees, moving back and forth in a frenetic rhythm befitting a rabid refugee from the Looneyville Home for belfry bats. I was biting my toenails.
To make things even more thrilling, or chilling, he said, “Hey do you mind if we make a quick stop so I can ask this girl’s mom if I can take her daughter to the movies?”
I don’t think I have ever minded anything as much in my life. “Sure, sounds like fun,” I lied through my chattering teeth.
Sitting half dazed in the living room of a double-wide “mobile” home in the middle of West Nowhere while three country bumpkins awkwardly stumble their way through a conversation about nothing, I heard a voice in my head …
“What in the Sam Hill are you doing here?”
“Hangin’ with my homies, what does it look like.”
Eventually escaping the most harrowing example of free transportation ever, I made it to an interstate truck-stop where I bummed a ride from a road-weary and semi-inebriated chap, who quickly passed out in the passenger seat. I proceeded to motor through the vast and barren expanse, non-stop, all night long, with nary a nod off. Someone should totally bottle that adrenaline stuff.
The CB radio was my best and only friend as I hightailed the speed limits and chatted up the frequencies like a Smoky Bandit, while my somnolent sidekick slept off the whiskey stupor that had authorized a complete stranger to spirit him anonymously across the state. Bottoms up!
When we finally reached his exit in Dallas, I pulled over and woke him up. Lucky for him I was an honest bloke or he would have woke up in Nacogdoches. Or Vegas.
For those still reading, I made it safely home, and promptly swore off hitching, skiing with mental midgets and riding in cars with tortured mentals. Finally, some resolutions I can keep. Here’s to dodging bullets and surviving to write another day.
May the forest be with you, ~~ j ~~
“My plan is to live forever. So far, so good.” ~~ Steven Wright
