Yesterday we joined the Durango Mountain Club, which is a nice place to sit when you're tool tired to ski. Here's Ethel, sitting by the fireplace with an original Paul Folwell over the fireplace -

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Now, instead of loading up everything and taking it to the ski hill and parking and making our way to the chairlift, now we pull up Ethel's truck and the valet (with a nametag that says "Rudy Valet") parks it for us; we walk into the club and I run on the dreadmill and Ethel does whatever she does (I suspect that it'll be ellipticating and lifting, but Ethel doesn't have any sneakers here at the hill, so this morning she sat upstairs in the clubroom and logged in and worked for a while).

After working out, we go into the locker room and change, then pick up the skis from the ski valet - the boots have been on the warmer for a while, and the skis are freshly tuned. As we head upstairs (via the club elevator) to the chairlift level, we go through the clubroom and get the continental breakfast and fresh-brewed Starbucks.

Then we walk right out to the lift, ski up and ski on, and get in some runs; when we finish, we hop in the spa and let the bubbles take away the soreness while fresh snow falls on my bald spot.

...in 1993, after our first trip to Purgatory, and my first ever ski season (in addition to the nine days at Purg, I skiied about ten days in North Carolina and a couple of weekends at Snowshoe in West Virgina)  I decided that I was going to go on a trip by myself, so that I wouldn't have to wait for anybody else - I could ski all that I wanted.

I drove up to West Virginia in Ethel's Dodge Sundance hatchback, with the backseats that laid down so that I could sleep in the back in a sleeping bag and eat bagels and cream cheese out of a cooler. This is not the same as a day at Durango Mountain Club.

When I got to Snowshoe,I spent the first night in the car; everything was fine. I ate bagels and cream cheese out of the cooler. This is not the same as a day at the Durango Mountain Club.

I had a good day of skiing, and then, that night, a storm came up, and the car started rocking back and forth in the wind - it really, really started snowing hard. (for those of you playing along, this was the weekend of the Storm of the Century - and those folks in DC think that they just got some snow. Folks have no memories). I got out of the car and started looking for a hotel, but there wasn't anything available in my price range - so I spent much of the night wandering around in a blizzard, looking for lodging. My car got stuck in a snowdrift. This is not the same as a day at the Durango Mountain Club.

Eventually I saw another car that was stuck in a parking lot - I helped these guys move the car into a safe place. They asked me what I was doing out in that weather - I told 'em. They invited me to stay in their hotel room.

I spent the next three nights sleeping on the floor of a hotel room with five snowboarders, trying to read Hunt For Red October while they were watching a Beevis and Butthead marathon on MTV, and a female boarder (a "shred betty", in the parlance of the day) kept wondering why I would be reading that book - did I like the movie? Did I like Boat Movies? - and skiing during the day through stinging snow that was building up faster than they could groom it, and deeper than I could ski it.

This is not the same as a day at the Durango Mountain Club.

This morning, during breakfast, while sitting there eating my toasted bagel and looking up at the Needles Mountains from my breakfast table, I asked God to please not let me take this for granted.