Something Red

I don't know why I'm constantly amazed at how retarded most people are, but I am.

Take, for instance, the situation that happened to me yesterday. I was skiing up at Copper (I know my doctor said not to but for the record I think holding a ski pole has been therapeutic as the swelling in my finger has gone down substantially in the past two days). I thought I just had a runny nose and so I kept wiping it with my glove, which happens to be black. I couldn't figure out why, even with the lifts being crowded, I was always on a chair lift by myself. Also, people, I thought, were looking at me funny.

Finally I got on a lift with a Copper employee rescue guy, whatever you call them, who tried to pick me up. When his stupid schtick about the music I was listening to wasn't working he said "Um, you have something on your face." Something what? I asked. "Something red" he replied.

The "something red" was blood from my nose, which had been bleeding apparently for the past two hours. I looked down at the front of my jacket (light blue, because Moonstone doesn't make the right color pink ski jacket) and realized I looked like a serial murderer. The rescue guy cleaned the blood off my face with some snow that he pulled off his ski and then told me that I should wait for him in the SAR hut at the top of the Excelerator lift. He was on the lift to go to a rescue (girl hit a tree, fractured skull, airlifted to Denver), but assured me that he would be back in an hour or so and I should wait for him to return to treat my bloody nose.

I was like, are you kidding? My nose bleeds all the time when I return to altitude. The rescue guy got upset and started going off about how I could faint or worse. Which makes me wonder, what would be worse than fainting while skiing? Fainting while skiing with a broken hand, fainting while skiing with a broken hand in moguls...

I skied off and never saw that guy again. I did get fed a lot of shit at the Super Bee lift by a kid named Kevin from Kansas City, MO, who couldn't get his bar code reader to work. I told him he was incompetent and he said "at least I'm not the bloody nose girl". I saw him again today and we continued our repartee.

Today, as a stark contrast, I got on a lift with a guy who's been grooming runs at Copper for 25 years. I believe he said his name was Larry. He asked me if I could fix his computer in exchange for showing me a fox burrough on a run called Triple Threat. I declined his offer because he was really drunk and Triple Threat is all moguls. I did ask Larry to close the latches on my left boot as I still can't do it on my own. He did and then followed me down Rosi's Run yelling "Franki (he read my name off my pass), fix my computer, please!" Every time I saw Larry today, which ended up being a lot for some reason, he would yell "Franki, fix my computer." I'm sure he recognized me through the blowing snow because I still have blood on my jacket, making me hard to miss.

My last run of the day Larry ran into me (literally) at the Super Bee. He put his arm around me and staggered with me to the lift (Busch was handing out free beers in the parking lot and at the bottom of every lift - I could not figure that out - every snow boarder I got on a lift with was really trashed and standing in line I felt like I was at a bar - um, safety first, glad I wore my helmet today). As we took off into the blowing snow he looked at me and said, "Dude, I think your nose is bleeding."

Thanks, Larry.