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Saturday, February 25, 2006
Lesson for the day: Use your ass. 
| | We actually had a good time on Mt. Baldy, considering that there wasn't much snow, and the temperature was in the 70s down below the mountain in Los Angeles. We hit about 50 on the slopes. Or should I say slope. Only one slope was navigable by skiers not wanting to risk interacting with geology. |
| | One plus was that the kid and I were among the better skiiers out there. That's because there were a total of about five skiiers and maybe 300 snowboarders, most of them, well, not really... um, competent. Which is no impediment to snowboarding, actually. Far as we could tell. |
| | In fact, while we were on the lift, the kid and I came up with some rules for Mt. Baldy snowboarders. The same rules may not apply elsewhere. I have no idea. In the last two years, we've only skied Baldy. And our sample is probably unfair. But not unfunny. |
| | Rules for snowboarding on Mt. Baldy: |
| | 2) Sit on your ass, for as long as possible. |
| | 3) Wait for your friends to come and fall on their asses next to your ass. |
| | 4) Sit on your ass with your friends on their asses, for as long as possilbe. |
| | 5) Do all this in the middle of a trail. The narrower the trail, the better. |
| | 6) If possible, fall on your ass in the path of somebody else. |
| | 7) Have no skills. Other than falling on your ass. |
| | 8) When actually snowboarding, run into people. |
| | 9) When running into people, fall on your ass again. |
| | 10) Bonus: get the people you run into to fall on their asses too. |
Tale of whoa
| | So we're skiing today. I hope. Says here it's 34 degrees on Mt. Baldy right now. Looking up at it from our motel, there doesn't appear to be a flake of snow on the thing. Quite the contrast from a year ago today, when it was alpine. Last year we had huge rains in our settled regions, and deep snows at the high elevations. The base at Mt. Baldy was 9-13 feet. This year we've had one little rain more than a week ago, about which the Mt. Baldy site says We picked up a total of 6-10 inches of new snow and are blowing snow everyday. Right. |
| | So we're not expecting much, just a chance to get some skiing in this Winter, and some fun on the bunny run for the kid. |
| | Our luck hasn't been good so far. After a business meeting in Burbank yesterday, my wife handed off our son at a meeting point near an exit off the Ventura Freeway in The Valley. That was the last thing that went smoothly. |
| | First we went to a Starbucks on Laurel Canyon to go online and book a place to stay. I picked the Hampton Inn Hotel and Suites in Ontario, about seven miles east of the road up to Mt. Baldy. The kid was hungry, but didn't like anything in the cooler at Starbucks, so we put off eating. |
| | Heading east on the Foothill/210, we ran into parked traffic that crawled for the next thirty miles. When I looked over the side at surface roads, those were packed too. There was an accident up ahead near the 605, the radio said. "Expect slow going." The going stayed slow all the way to the 57, by which time I had to piss so bad that my hair was turning yellow. |
| | From what I remembered when I booked the hotel, it was off the San Bernardino Freeway, so I took the 57 south to the 10, headed East, and took the first exit, so we could look at the map and find a place to pee. |
| | We should have done that in reverse order, so my mind would be straighter. But instead I found Mill Circle back up near the 15/210 interchange, meaning we should have stayed on the Foothill. So we set our mental vectors for that spot while we searched up and down the exit road, something in Pomona, for a place to piss. We chose a Del Taco where we waited 10 minutes with our knees clattering while the mens room door stayed locked with an apparently permanent occupant inside. |
| | So we gave up and headed East on the 10, then North on the 15, where we immediately ran into parked traffic. I checked the map with the dome light, found from the 2-point type that our destination could be reached better by surface roads, took the first exit, and headed in what I thought would be the right direction, up a street called Milliken, which eventually narrowed its way into the burb of Rancho Cucamonga, which lies below Mt. Baldy and I knew had to be The Wrong Place. |
| | So I checked the map and saw that Mill Circle was in fact not at the 15/210 interchange, but at the 15/10 interchange, where we exited off the last traffic jam. So we retraced our path, past not a single fast food place or other obvious Place To Piss, finally finding our way into a vast simplex of big box stores called Ontario Mills. Here we found the hotel, took our pees before checking in, and found ourselves at the back of a line that wasn't there when we came in. The line was a troop of marines. Half an hour later, we checked in, and went looking for a place to eat. |
| | There are, apparently, no non-chain restaurants at Ontario Mills. Chevy's, Outback, RainForest Cafe and a variety of the usual fast food places are all on the same circular road around the shopping center. We started with Outback, but found a long line and moved on to Chevy's. |
| | By now it was past 9pm, and the kid was more wasted by boredom and sleepiness than hunger. After we got a table at Chevy's, he fell asleep with his head on the table before the drink arrived, 20 minutes after we did. I told the waiter that we'd just pay for the drink — a root beer for the kid; there was some problem with the beer I had ordered, and it didn't make it — and pick up food at Carls Jr. or something. Getting the bill for $1.09 took another ten minutes because the waiter had to get the manager involved, and the manager could not be found. |
| | At the Carl's Jr. drive-through, the kid took so long being indecisive about how he wanted his burger prepared that the line of cars behind us was getting antsy, as was I. When the kid said something kinda snotty about onions, I lost it and said "forget it, we're driving through," and moved ahead to let the next car order. I thought there was nobody ahead of us, but there was: a black Lincoln that waited at the pick-up window for ten minutes for its driver's food to arrive, then sat in the lane for another two minutes after leaving the window, for some unknown reason. At this point I uncorked a scream. The Lincoln creeped out of the way. It was now past 9:30 and the only fast food place left was McDonalds, which I can't stand (except for certain breakfast items), so we headed back to the hotel, where I bought a frozen ham & cheeze chimichanga, which we nuked in the hotel breakfast area microwave oven, took back to the room and shared. By now it was past 10pm. I had picked up the kid at 3. |
| | He fell asleep in seconds, me in minutes. |
| | Now it's morning, and I've answered his request to tell The Story of Yesterday on the blog. Skiing comes next. |
The right picture
Explaining the obvious
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