The Skier's Swagger
Today, I spent the larger part of seven hours hanging out in the lodge at Terry Peak (a ski spot here in the Hills). I possess the attention span of a five-year-old, and since this is not conducive to the reading I was trying to do, I instead spent a fair amount of time people watching.
It's pretty awesome. The strange assortment of people ... There are the business/yuppie/higher-up types, the middle and high school kids, the families, and the twenty-somethings. Within these groups, there are those from out of town and the native South Dakotans, and within these are the skiers, the snowboarders, and the lodgers. I, for instance, am a native South Dakotan twenty-something lodger.
The families are interesting. For the most part, they're skiers (with the exception of some older siblings), and it's rather fun to watch the littlest kids skiing circles around their respective fathers.
A person can't help but get a kick out of the yuppie skiers, either. Full ski suits, often in some metallic shade (silver, pink, blue, green -- as long as it's shiny and/or flashy, it's good), matching hat, gloves, and (polarized) goggles, not to mention top-of-the-line skis and boots (never rentals). Honest, horrible truth? A lodger like myself can't seem to help the guilty pleasure that comes with seeing all that coordination fly when one of them biffs it.
Or how about watching the middle/high school male boarders hitting on middle/high school female whatevers? Humorous situation in a regular setting, made hilarious by the potential of getting barrelled into because someone's in the way of a much more quickly-moving, slightly out of control newbie.
I've also enjoyed watching the skiers and snowboarders doing laps through the lodge ... It's always easy to differentiate, even if you can't see their boots. Snowboarding boots are considerably easier to walk in. Skiing boots lend a certain swagger to the walker ... Here it's fun to watch different people try to make up for that. Some trudge, dragging their feet instead of walking "proudly," while others just seem to have that much more motion in their actions. High school boys that would be puffing out their chests anyway get an extra bounce, and tend to look just a little ridiculous.
If yesterday's entry wasn't enough pseudo-intellectualism for you, now you have this one.
See you later, people.
Why doesn't Tarzan have a beard?
It's pretty awesome. The strange assortment of people ... There are the business/yuppie/higher-up types, the middle and high school kids, the families, and the twenty-somethings. Within these groups, there are those from out of town and the native South Dakotans, and within these are the skiers, the snowboarders, and the lodgers. I, for instance, am a native South Dakotan twenty-something lodger.
The families are interesting. For the most part, they're skiers (with the exception of some older siblings), and it's rather fun to watch the littlest kids skiing circles around their respective fathers.
A person can't help but get a kick out of the yuppie skiers, either. Full ski suits, often in some metallic shade (silver, pink, blue, green -- as long as it's shiny and/or flashy, it's good), matching hat, gloves, and (polarized) goggles, not to mention top-of-the-line skis and boots (never rentals). Honest, horrible truth? A lodger like myself can't seem to help the guilty pleasure that comes with seeing all that coordination fly when one of them biffs it.
Or how about watching the middle/high school male boarders hitting on middle/high school female whatevers? Humorous situation in a regular setting, made hilarious by the potential of getting barrelled into because someone's in the way of a much more quickly-moving, slightly out of control newbie.
I've also enjoyed watching the skiers and snowboarders doing laps through the lodge ... It's always easy to differentiate, even if you can't see their boots. Snowboarding boots are considerably easier to walk in. Skiing boots lend a certain swagger to the walker ... Here it's fun to watch different people try to make up for that. Some trudge, dragging their feet instead of walking "proudly," while others just seem to have that much more motion in their actions. High school boys that would be puffing out their chests anyway get an extra bounce, and tend to look just a little ridiculous.
If yesterday's entry wasn't enough pseudo-intellectualism for you, now you have this one.
See you later, people.
Why doesn't Tarzan have a beard?
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