I approached the security line with a bit of performance anxiety. My palms were sweaty, I tried desperately to think of any way Cindy could have slipped contraband into my carry-on. I breezed through and regained a bit of my confidence as I headed out early last Monday morning for Salt Lake City.
Approaching Salt Lake City, the plane slipped through a thick cloud layer. For about 45 seconds, the cloud divider pushed brilliantly blue sky above, framed rolling topography of snow-dusted mountains below. Evergreens cast rugged 5 o'clock shadows on the faces of the Utah mountain range. The proximity of the mountains with their aggressive incline caught me off guard. In Denver, you can scan the Rockies from base to peak with a minimal vertical eye sweep, head staying stationary. Leaving the airport at SLC, you actually have to tilt your chin up to look towards the mountain tops. Potbellied clouds obfuscated the mountain peaks, adding a mystique. Within less than 40 minutes, I had gone from airport baggage carousel to snowy slopes.
"Yeah, yesterday you could pick up a handful of snow and..." phoofff..."blow it off like powdered sugar. Today, " my chairlift buddy continued, "it's settled a bit. Not like that Tahoe stuff. That's some heavy, wet snow." Well, that was the purpose for going to Utah to snowboard: all the hype over the fresh powder. I nodded sagely, hoping he didn't ask for a verbal CV of my snowboarding qualifications. Ok, so I've carved in Montana, Colorado, California, Nevada, and now Utah. Banff and the Swiss Alps (preferably heli-boarding) are on my to-do list. But I did notice that settled or not, snowboarding in Utah was an experience worth being cold for (that's a lot from me). Forgive my dangling participle. The legendary light, fluffy powder had settled like month-old powdered sugar poured into a measuring cup and tamped firmly on the kitchen counter until densely packed. Snow on the less-traveled runs provided enough grip on the board's edge to allow sweet, tight turns. But shift that center of gravity a quarter of a second too soon, and it would ferociously bite the board into instant immobility, the rest of your body slamming helplessly into suddenly not-soft white stuff. Still worth it. The shorter double-black diamonds had manageable runs through trees, and Salt Lake City has proved its reluctant acceptance of snowboarding as a sport with its terrain park and pipes. There were still flat spots that are the bane of any snowboarders existence; I cast about for any nearby skiing Cubans, but no luck.
After a few hours, I headed back to the airport and caught the last flight out to Vegas. I stood in a surprisingly long check-in line at the hotel. It's busy at 10:30 p.m. on a Monday at the Stratosphere. Who said the economy was hitting Vegas below the belt? An anxious woman in front of me was checking in, her mom and her kids, ages 10 and 13, waiting off to the side for her. She's moving from Chicago to Vegas to get a fresh start after a nasty divorce, and she's hoping that her kids will get a little more enthusiastic about the move after a few days on the strip. Oh, the hasty judgements I would have been guilty of making just a few years ago. Her eyes were faintly bulging as she watched a flat-screen above the registration desk rolling video on all the delights the Stratosphere, tallest building west of the Mississippi, had to offer. Breathless and slightly bug-eyed, she turned to me and said, "Would you ever go on that? I wouldn't be caught dead on that!" She was referring to the Insanity ride. I grinned wickedly and answered, "Actually, I came to Vegas just to ride that one." My last few attempts to make it on this ride over the years had been aborted by high winds. Apparently, being on a spider-legged marvel that hangs you over the edge of a 900-foot drop and spins you around is deemed unsafe in high winds. Spoil sports. Bet they'd let you ride it in the Dominican Republic. So up to the top of the tower I went. And over the edge I went, 900 feet over a disappointingly boring view of a freight container yard. My co-riders provided the rest of the entertainment: a small group of Asian business men who dropped their stoically straight faces to shriek excitedly like high-schoolers and two macho American guys who exchanged expletives the entire ride (imagine a game of marco/polo but oh s***/oh f*** the entire time).
I wasn't thinking twice about toy guns or play dough when I checked into the Vegas airport (wake-up call at 4:15 a.m. after a few quarters in the machines post-Insanity ride). I was breezing through security with my new-found confidence when my bag was being scrutinized by TSA. "Is this your bag?" the agent asked, pulling it off the belt. "We need to take a quick look inside." I almost blurted, "But I didn't even geocache!" As the patient gentleman combed through my bag, he chatted about the inadmissible items for carry-ons, including drinks. I was a bit stupefied. Then he pulled out the small plastic honeybear. Once through security at the airport in Salt Lake City, I had stopped into a gift shop to pick up a few souvenirs for family. I hadn't even thought about the fact I'd be leaving Vegas airport before returning home, so the huckleberry honey didn't even register as a potential TSA issue. Humbled, I hung my head and took him up on his offer to run back down to the ticket counter to check my bag. Coming back through the second time, I defiantly tossed my purse through the scanner, and stepped through the arch. Having sounded no alarms, I was beelining to my purse & shoes on the other side of the scanner - hurry, before TSA finds something wrong with my shoelaces or something - when the short, elderly security lady physically blocked my path. "Sorry, honey, I need to pat you down real quick. You're a little poofy there." Her hands deftly patted my midsection where my sweater poofed. All I could think of was the look of sheer panic and pain that my kickboxing class was going to have when I finished with them on Tuesday. Maybe I shouldn't have ordered that second side of fried okra at Cracker Barrel in SLC. My plane landed in Sacramento at 7:45 a.m., and by 9 I was finger-knuckle-deep in plaque and prophy paste at work.
Approaching Salt Lake City, the plane slipped through a thick cloud layer. For about 45 seconds, the cloud divider pushed brilliantly blue sky above, framed rolling topography of snow-dusted mountains below. Evergreens cast rugged 5 o'clock shadows on the faces of the Utah mountain range. The proximity of the mountains with their aggressive incline caught me off guard. In Denver, you can scan the Rockies from base to peak with a minimal vertical eye sweep, head staying stationary. Leaving the airport at SLC, you actually have to tilt your chin up to look towards the mountain tops. Potbellied clouds obfuscated the mountain peaks, adding a mystique. Within less than 40 minutes, I had gone from airport baggage carousel to snowy slopes.
"Yeah, yesterday you could pick up a handful of snow and..." phoofff..."blow it off like powdered sugar. Today, " my chairlift buddy continued, "it's settled a bit. Not like that Tahoe stuff. That's some heavy, wet snow." Well, that was the purpose for going to Utah to snowboard: all the hype over the fresh powder. I nodded sagely, hoping he didn't ask for a verbal CV of my snowboarding qualifications. Ok, so I've carved in Montana, Colorado, California, Nevada, and now Utah. Banff and the Swiss Alps (preferably heli-boarding) are on my to-do list. But I did notice that settled or not, snowboarding in Utah was an experience worth being cold for (that's a lot from me). Forgive my dangling participle. The legendary light, fluffy powder had settled like month-old powdered sugar poured into a measuring cup and tamped firmly on the kitchen counter until densely packed. Snow on the less-traveled runs provided enough grip on the board's edge to allow sweet, tight turns. But shift that center of gravity a quarter of a second too soon, and it would ferociously bite the board into instant immobility, the rest of your body slamming helplessly into suddenly not-soft white stuff. Still worth it. The shorter double-black diamonds had manageable runs through trees, and Salt Lake City has proved its reluctant acceptance of snowboarding as a sport with its terrain park and pipes. There were still flat spots that are the bane of any snowboarders existence; I cast about for any nearby skiing Cubans, but no luck.
After a few hours, I headed back to the airport and caught the last flight out to Vegas. I stood in a surprisingly long check-in line at the hotel. It's busy at 10:30 p.m. on a Monday at the Stratosphere. Who said the economy was hitting Vegas below the belt? An anxious woman in front of me was checking in, her mom and her kids, ages 10 and 13, waiting off to the side for her. She's moving from Chicago to Vegas to get a fresh start after a nasty divorce, and she's hoping that her kids will get a little more enthusiastic about the move after a few days on the strip. Oh, the hasty judgements I would have been guilty of making just a few years ago. Her eyes were faintly bulging as she watched a flat-screen above the registration desk rolling video on all the delights the Stratosphere, tallest building west of the Mississippi, had to offer. Breathless and slightly bug-eyed, she turned to me and said, "Would you ever go on that? I wouldn't be caught dead on that!" She was referring to the Insanity ride. I grinned wickedly and answered, "Actually, I came to Vegas just to ride that one." My last few attempts to make it on this ride over the years had been aborted by high winds. Apparently, being on a spider-legged marvel that hangs you over the edge of a 900-foot drop and spins you around is deemed unsafe in high winds. Spoil sports. Bet they'd let you ride it in the Dominican Republic. So up to the top of the tower I went. And over the edge I went, 900 feet over a disappointingly boring view of a freight container yard. My co-riders provided the rest of the entertainment: a small group of Asian business men who dropped their stoically straight faces to shriek excitedly like high-schoolers and two macho American guys who exchanged expletives the entire ride (imagine a game of marco/polo but oh s***/oh f*** the entire time).
I wasn't thinking twice about toy guns or play dough when I checked into the Vegas airport (wake-up call at 4:15 a.m. after a few quarters in the machines post-Insanity ride). I was breezing through security with my new-found confidence when my bag was being scrutinized by TSA. "Is this your bag?" the agent asked, pulling it off the belt. "We need to take a quick look inside." I almost blurted, "But I didn't even geocache!" As the patient gentleman combed through my bag, he chatted about the inadmissible items for carry-ons, including drinks. I was a bit stupefied. Then he pulled out the small plastic honeybear. Once through security at the airport in Salt Lake City, I had stopped into a gift shop to pick up a few souvenirs for family. I hadn't even thought about the fact I'd be leaving Vegas airport before returning home, so the huckleberry honey didn't even register as a potential TSA issue. Humbled, I hung my head and took him up on his offer to run back down to the ticket counter to check my bag. Coming back through the second time, I defiantly tossed my purse through the scanner, and stepped through the arch. Having sounded no alarms, I was beelining to my purse & shoes on the other side of the scanner - hurry, before TSA finds something wrong with my shoelaces or something - when the short, elderly security lady physically blocked my path. "Sorry, honey, I need to pat you down real quick. You're a little poofy there." Her hands deftly patted my midsection where my sweater poofed. All I could think of was the look of sheer panic and pain that my kickboxing class was going to have when I finished with them on Tuesday. Maybe I shouldn't have ordered that second side of fried okra at Cracker Barrel in SLC. My plane landed in Sacramento at 7:45 a.m., and by 9 I was finger-knuckle-deep in plaque and prophy paste at work.
1 comment:
Poofy? Not one bit! Don't they know you are a seasoned ultra runner?!!! Thanks for taking us along for the ride. I can totally imagine the slopes, the ride, and the security snafu!
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