BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEE...THONK!
...My hand comes crashing down on the alarm clock, hammering the entire thing so as to be sure that I hit the off button. The dogs begin to stir. Bella jumps up on the bed and paws at me, reminding me that I'm not the only one who has a bladder running at capacity. Paco begins to push on his kennel door. Clang...clang...clang. "Fine, okay, relax," I say as I sit up, wrapping my three blankets around me as I proceed to let Paco out of the kennel in the flat, low light that's barely creeping around the sides of my heavy curtains. We have a "no heat" policy in my house due to the nonexistent insulation and a strong adversion to heating bills. Instead we spend all fall cutting 3 - 4 cords of wood and collecting wool blankets. Paco joins Bella on my bed as I fall back to the mattress, both of them pawing and licking me, tails in propeller mode. Bella seems to know that it's her turn to come to work today because she's extra excited, snorting and doing the circle dance on my lower extremeties. "Christ, dog. We're going. We're going, okay?" Wrapped like a wool burrito, I begin to scoot on the mattress towards the door. Bella is really going crazy now. "You really gotta go, girl? Do you??!!" I taunt as I feign reaching for the door nob from the side of my bed. "Huh? Wha'? Wanna go...wanna go...wanna go...OUT?" Bella is barking now while Paco watches, lab ears raised, head cocked.
As I twist the door knob both dogs launch off the bed towards the door. I swing it open in time for them to go flying out the door. As the door swings open, I'm blinded by white light and a sudden, bitter cold.
Whooooosh! Both dogs go sailing into a virtual explosion from 18" of fresh fluff on my deck.
The powder cloud ensues and I'm showered by granules of fluff as my bed is only a few feet from the door. In that split second I watch as snow comes at my freshly vacuumed floor and I'm hammered by a cold, cold wave in my already FDA-approved meat locker of a room. "Ohhhhhhh," I whine as a huge grin takes over my face.
I flick on the radio and my boy, jimmy page, is doing his morning radio program. "...a very high avalanche danger today due to the new snow, high winds and that week layer we've seen 3 inches down on most aspects" he says. I continue to grin as I lace up my Danners and run upstairs. One of my roomies is still asleep in the loft above the living room. "Tim! Tim! Did you see this shite?" He grumbles and then sits up, shouting an expletive in shock.
Out to the driveway I go after feeding the brown dog. Bella is doing her powder mole game in the driveway--submerging herself and then reappearing a few feet later in an explosive jump through the fluff. My cruiser, which was a bare bike in a bare driveway in a bare valley floor only yesterday is a cloudy, distorted image of a bike. A plow goes busting by on the street, throwing up snow walls on either side of it.
"Today you quit your fucking desk job, Blockerman!" My neighbor and touring partner, Hammer yells laughing as he's gingerly manuevering his 2WD pickup out of his driveway, skis hanging out the back.
Today there is simply nothing better in life than my life. My dogs, my town, my friends, my mountains and my snow. Yeah I'm stuck behind a desk and I can't even see the base of the resort which is a half mile away, directly outside my office window. My life is not one of trust funds and freedom but of compromise and devotion to a lifestyle. But for this morning and many like it, it's really all I'll ever need.
Happy Dump Day, y'all! :D :D :D :D
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