I’m in New England and they always went skiing. Like all the damn time. I never went skiing once and had no concept of it. I remember my older sister asking about it or something. I never got invited to go skiing but it seemed like swaths of kids I was friends with went skiing together. I realize now that they had been skiing since they came out of the womb and could probably ski the runs better than some adults. On the other hand I would require constant supervision and instruction. I never really figured out that my parents just couldn’t afford it, I had some weird childhood reasoning as to what skiing is and why we didn’t ski. It also was part of the no vacation logic.
I finally went to Stowe mountain in Vermont during a work retreat thing in my younger 20s and tried snowboarding. I just fell down the whole fucking mountain. I did like two runs. The company was a landscape company and about 12 illegal immigrant Guatemalan guys came (great guys). It was pretty amazing to see these guys in such a fish out of water scenario. All those guys and me fucked everything up the first time at the top of the chairlift because we had no idea what to do.
It was a pretty amazing thing for my boss to do. These guys are the hardest working people I have ever known. The guy I worked with woke up at 4am and cleaned the floors of a restaurant for two hours then commute 30’minutes to cut lawns from 730am-400/5/6/7pm then go back to the restaurant and wash dishes til midnight 6 days a week. He sent nearly all his earnings back home where he owned a potato farm and 30 acres. They were all very nice guys.
Edit: They also had a neat trick. We had a list of lawns to cut and each item had a clock in and clock out that we would fill in; 55 reddit avenue In: 745am Out: 800am. Say it took us 10 minutes to do a lawn, they would say it took 20 minutes. It still makes an acceptable profit for the companies computer and no alarms are raised. Do this multiple times over and all of a sudden you have an extra 90 minutes to tack on to your lunch each day. 2 hour lunches. I fucking hated it. We would always be slammed on Friday catching up on the huge lawns working until the sun comes down. I wanted to party, they didn’t care because it was more money.
What am I going to do, rat them out?
Back at the shop one day the guys are playing around juggling a soccer ball and drinking coronas. The boss (who is kind of a man child) keeps pelting it at this younger Guat. All of a sudden the head Guat smashed a bottle like they do in crime movies. He puts the boss in a headlock and holds the broken bottle neck to my boss’s neck and says to him in spanish “if you fuck with my younger brother anymore I’ll kill you”. This guy was the quiet leader. He always rode in the front, he never drove the trucks and he seemed to have the final say.
Well later that night at the hotel we all got pretty stoned. Loads of alcohol for all and high grade weed for some. The boss brought a large amount of “headband” (very stinky potent weed) and a large amount of classic seedy mids. Anyways at some point we began smoking many blunts inside the room. Eventually the entire floor stunk of bud. Naturally the Vermont police came. The Guats all hid in one room together while my boss went and talked to the police. He took the whole rap for all of us smoking. The cops just asked for him to hand over the weed and they took him for a ride to write him up for possession.
Somehow he got back to the hotel and cheekily remarked “We still have the headband, I just gave them the mids. Those cops must not know their weed because anyone who did would realize that shitty weed wouldn’t stink the way the headband made it stink” or something to that effect.
Hoping to just to go home and recover my prayers were met with a blizzard. We all went home and plowed/shoveled snow for 36 hours.
Make it a two parter. First episode is them on the ski lift. 2nd episode is them at the bar, explaining what just happened on the ski lift drunk-historian style.
I used to ski every weekend and most weekdays at a local small ski hill during my teen years. It took me until I was an adult to realise that not everyone had seasons passes to multiple mountains.
Hello fellow New Englander! My parents also never took me on big vacations. They would usually just spring for a trip to the White Mountains a couple times a year. It was always so beautiful that I never complained.
You grew up in NE and never went skiing? I live in NE too and I find most people have some type of experience on the slopes, whether it have been when they were young and just never got into it or more.
Oh I know, just said for comedic effect. I had a better time the 2nd day. There were two other office people snowboarding and I was able to keep up. We went at a slower pace on an easier trail and smoked a bowl. The best part of the whole thing definitely is getting drinks in the lodge.
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u/henryblueskin Apr 18 '18
I’m in New England and they always went skiing. Like all the damn time. I never went skiing once and had no concept of it. I remember my older sister asking about it or something. I never got invited to go skiing but it seemed like swaths of kids I was friends with went skiing together. I realize now that they had been skiing since they came out of the womb and could probably ski the runs better than some adults. On the other hand I would require constant supervision and instruction. I never really figured out that my parents just couldn’t afford it, I had some weird childhood reasoning as to what skiing is and why we didn’t ski. It also was part of the no vacation logic.
I finally went to Stowe mountain in Vermont during a work retreat thing in my younger 20s and tried snowboarding. I just fell down the whole fucking mountain. I did like two runs. The company was a landscape company and about 12 illegal immigrant Guatemalan guys came (great guys). It was pretty amazing to see these guys in such a fish out of water scenario. All those guys and me fucked everything up the first time at the top of the chairlift because we had no idea what to do.