Note
Skiing was on tap today what with sunshine and beckoning blue skies, and so I headed up top. As I was putting on my skis, I glanced up the trail and caught sight of a familiar stick figure--the unmistakable outline of racer X8A7--standing still at the base of the Campground Loop. And I knew what he was doing. How many countless times have I seen him standing there, motionless, trying to decide to go left or right, weighing the pros and cons of either choice? It would hardly seem to make any difference, since either way you go, you end up at the same place on the far side of the loop. Or, if you just keep on going around, eventually you come back to the starting point--it being a loop--and you can make the other choice then if you like.
But I recognize the symptoms and fully sympathize, and am perhaps just as susceptible to the same affliction, having once long ago fallen prey to the same disease. Once you take the introductory course to Geology--"Rocks for Jocks"--you are never the same again.
So I skied up to X8A7 and said hello and asked him: "Stuck again?"
He said yes.
I said: "We've been over this before. You know it's just a loop. It really doesn't matter which way you go."
X8A7 just nodded his head. I sympathized.
I said: "Do you want to talk about the weather?"
Neither of us said anything for a while, except for when someone would ski past, and then we would both say to the them: "Hi, hi, hi." If a dog ran by, we didn't say anything to the dog. No sense in antagonizing a dog on the ski trails.
More time passed and then I said: "Do you want to talk about the government?" It seemed like a promising topic of conversation, but we just stood there saying nothing for a while again, except when other skiers came by, when again we would say "hi, hi, hi."
Finally racer X8A7 asked if I wanted to ski. That was quite startling, since I hadn't even been there for much more than 20-30 minutes of indecision time. I cautiously said that would be fine as long as he didn't race me into the ground (after all, he is racer X8A7, and not tree sloth X8A7), and with that he immediately headed uphill on the right leg of the loop.
I think it was the quickest I've ever seen him make up his mind about which way to go on the loop, so for AP purposes, put it down as a PR.
We spent almost the entire time while we skiing talking rocks-for-jocks type stuff, you know, like rocks and minerals and stuff, except for when we were talking about the weather and the government. Good times.
After X8A7 was done (he started earlier than me), I skied for a while longer, and then switched gears and ran for a 100 (miles? days? minutes? probably minutes) on snow bike trails. There were some new beetle trees down across the trails I ran on, felled by the high winds either yesterday or the day before. Except for on packed trails, running up in the forest at Happy Jack is already pretty near too difficult, because of the depth of the snow that has fallen over the past week.
Lots of bikers were out today, and already I have the impression that snow biking is going to be up again in numbers this season. Mountain biking is way more popular in Laramie than even beer drinking and country music, and it is definitely carrying over into snow biking.