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- Newsgroups: rec.skiing
- Path: sparky!uunet!looking!grant
- From: grant@clarinet.com (Grant Robinson)
- Subject: Re: Club Vertical
- Organization: ClariNet Communications Corp.
- Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 19:54:53 GMT
- Message-ID: <1992Nov20.195453.4445@clarinet.com>
- References: <1992Nov19.192659.25132@adobe.com>
- Lines: 48
-
- In article <1992Nov19.192659.25132@adobe.com> mparker@adobe.com (Mike Parker) writes:
- >
- >Next, they will keep track of how many vertical feet you ski. Ski 100,000
- >feet and get some free stuff,
-
- Vertical? At Northstar? Kind of ironic that they'd do this at "Flatstar."
-
- Seriously, when I was new here (CA) last year, I skiied there one day,
- without ever having heard of the "flatstar" reputation. In reality, it's
- even worse than people make it out to be. There are acutally some bump
- runs on the backside, but nothing so steep that any reasonably advanced
- skier would ever have to check their speed.
-
- >when you hit 150,000 you gt more free stuff,
- >etc. Cute, kinda fun to keep track, compete with your friends, etc.
- >The one person who scores the most feet gets next year's season pass free.
-
- [diatribe alert]
- Whatever happened to doing things for fun? Why has society become obsessed
- with numbers? Why should you care whether you or your friend skied more
- vertical? Joe Blo skis 200,000 ft. vertical. Joe BloDry parachutes
- 203 times. Joe Biker bikes 1420 miles. Some basketball guy boffs 20,000
- women.
-
- And to think, here I was, blithely and ignorantly happy in having skied a
- bunch last year. How many days, I have no idea, more than 2 and less than
- 100 would be a safe guess. Feet vertical? How about more than 100 and less
- than a million. Does this sound right?
-
- I admired a guy who came to Utah with us last winter. He would drop the
- coin for a ticket, ski as many quality runs as he wanted, then quit,
- sometimes before noon. Absolutely no financial motivation or peer pressure
- whatsoever, he may as well have been a member with a free season pass.
- Kind of the opposite extreme of the people who spend the money, then
- calculate to the penny their cost per run and per foot vertical (I got
- 17 runs at 1.75 per run, or 0.018 cents per foot vertical. Maybe if I
- ski one more run, I can get it down to 1.68 per run!)
-
- My advice: choose a place, pay your money, and don't look back. Leave
- your watch at home. Skip the long range weather reports, and short term
- ones too, if you're confident of getting to the hill safely and dressing
- properly. Forget about everything, work, feet vertical, blue vs. double
- black diamond, and ski. Ski until it's not fun anymore, or in the case of
- learners having a bit of difficulty, ski until it is!
-
- [End of Diatribe]
- --
- Grant Robinson -- ClariNet Communications Corp, Sunnyvale, CA (408)-296-0366
-