YoBeat: Making Fun of Snowboarding Since 1997

THERE COMES A TIME IN EVERY PERSON'S LIFE WHEN THEY GENUINELY FEEL AS IF THEY WERE BORN TO LOSE. SOME PEOPLE GET THAT FEELING ALL THE TIME, AND SOME PEOPLE GET THAT FEELING AS A DIRECT RESULTS OF SOME SHITTY EXPERIENCE OR ANOTHER. I AM A MEMBER OF THE FORMER GROUP. I HAVE A LOT OF “WORST DAYS EVER."

Timbro’s Worst Opening Day Ever

To start things off, this snowboard season featured my latest opening day ever.  Saturday, January 10th to be exact.  There were all sorts of reasons for this, but the main three were: no snow in the NW, a three-week vacation and a lingering back injury that I got on said vacation.  But I was pretty pumped to get the ‘ol shred legs underneath me again.

I loaded up my mini-van (yes, I have a mini-van, and it’s fucking awesome.  That’s something that you’re going to have to deal with) with all my gear, two roommates, one additional friend, and other items various and sundry. We left SE Portland at 7:10 a.m. eastbound to Mt. Hood Meadows for what was to be a rare sunny day in the NW.

I usually ride weekdays, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect on a weekend day, especially on a bluebird day after a week of pretty intense snow.  Much to my chagrin, we hit traffic early.  Real early.  Like 35 miles to the mountain early.  Steadfast and ever-mellow, our tireless crew carried onwards despite seeing miles of cars with ski racks and dumb stickers.

We stopped at the Sandy Shell to get some petrol, liquids, and delicious breakfast burritos.  After waiting in a 10 minute line to fill up, we were off, burritos and Gatorades in hand.   About 2 bites into the burrito and a sip of chocolate milk, got the “gut rumblies,” also commonly referred to as rot-gut, doo-doo butter, or bum-oil.  On a scale of 1 to emergency, this was a “how am I going to explain to my friends that I’ve just shit myself.” That’s pretty high.  Still twenty miles to the mountain (with traffic no less), and not much in the way of toilets between myself and the base lodge, I did whatever I could to take my mind off of it.

As we made our way closer to the mountain, I started to sense a feeling of possible victory.  I was thinking about everything from baseball to Betty Davis to try to keep from soiling myself.  As we rounded the corner to head to the main lodge I saw the worst possible thing — a line of stand-still traffic miles long.  Disheartened but determined, I pulled a high speed U-turn and made my way back to the HRM lodge.  Luckily there was no traffic, and I dropped myself off at the lodge while my friends parked the mini.  I ran inside, positive victory was at hand, only to be defeated once again.  There was a line of three dudes waiting for two stalls.  Positive that I had wronged the poo gods in some way, I tried to ignore everything and wait through it.  The dude behind me tried to start a conversation about how bad he had to shit.  I think he saw the ka-ka sweats on my brow and decided that I wasn’t such a good listener at the moment.  I finally made it in the stall, closed my eyes and pretended I was in a private bathroom in a nice executive suite, and did what I had to do.  Nothing else mattered in this moment.  Everything that I had done in my life and everything I will do was a decimal point next to this feeling of exquisite relief.  Until I opened my eyes and realized that there were approximately 6 squares of TP left.  Whatever.  Fuck it.  The hard part was over.  I somehow made it work, but also kind of felt bad for the dude after me.  Oh well, not my problem.

If I had known this would be the best part of my day, I would have cut my losses and went directly back home to bed…

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