It was moderately busy today at Whitefish and as usual folks were lined up to get on Chair 1 which doesn't start loading until 9:30. I get on the chair with 3 twenty somethings who were amped up pretty good, but they were funny in the way of all wise ass kids who have yet to be ground into the dirt of life.
The ringleader was one of those guys who you can tell is a good skier by the way they move through the lift line. The three are cracking jokes and #1 cracks open a breakfast coffee/beer of some sort and passes it around to his buddies. "I always let someone else finish the can so I don't have to deal with the empty" he says with a loud burp. His friends tell him to fuck off and they all laugh.
Then one of them looks ahead and says "why is that chair ahead of us empty, it was packed down there"
"It's shameful is what it is" I finally spoke up. "We could have been up top 30 seconds sooner".
"Dude, it's because we were all waiting for someone else to go and it just went by us".
I said, "And you know what, it's like a life metaphor, for the rest of the day, the rest of your life maybe, you're going to be saying I could be up there instead of stuck here.
"Yeah that would suck, but when we drive home today there's going to be an accident 15 seconds ahead of us and now we're going to avoid it".
That answer made my whole day a little brighter, the fog came and went all day but I felt reassured that young men still think they are immortal.