In an effort to combat a bad case of manufacturing fatigue, and at the promptings of Shane and Lane Meyer, I bolted to Squaw this morning only to find 8-10 inches of fresh up top and sunshine blaring across the Sierra. Having only been up a few times since the season started, the whole day was rejuvenation for a broken old body weakened by seemingly endless months of ass bust in the office and the factory. I could not have hoped for a better day to come back to life as I know it.

I first landed in Squaw 27 years ago and the place has always been special for me. It seemed even moreso today. Though the lot was filling up, it just didn't seem there were all that many people on the mountain - except in the lodges when I ran in to inhale a sandwich for breakfast at 1 pm.

First run was off Siberia. I had to slay the air that almost broke my neck during last year's summit when I had to dodge a rope along a race course that almost clotheslined me, forcing a hard bank into a windlip after launching onto a slope of frozen death goobers. The sunsequent ragdoll air punched a number off holes into the icy crust as I went limp for a ride that hurt for eight months. But today there was a landing pad and I hit it about four times before moving over to sneak up past the closed signs for Palisades to get a higher traverse to more fresh. After few of those, I broke off to Broken Arrow to try to hit some untracked I saw from the funitel. Lane Meyer and I were trying to hook by phone, but missed each other on Siberia. I found Shane off Broken Arrow and we rode up KT. He and his wife went one way, and I headed to Enchanted Forest to check out the trees and rocks.Basically it went that way until the afternoon, with a bunch of top to bottoms, then I headed down, ran into Lane, and helped a bit with organizing the roshambo tournament.

With a live band playing on the snow at Chamois, we got 64 people signed up and the tourney was on. Quite a few people had a hard time figuring out what it was all about as they plodded by on their way off the hill. But as the rounds went on, it got more intense. Huck4bucks and his girl, Nikki, were there, going against each other in the first round. Shane and I got knocked out in the second round, maybe Lane and h4h, too. The competition was fast, seeing as how some rounds only went 20 seconds before a winner progressed. In the end, a guy from Mill Valley won, taking like two or three hundred bucks and schwag for his victory. An insanely fun and intense time was had by all.

Especially me, because I got to go skiing.

edit: Oh, yeah.....poached the rope in Sun Bowl and went beyond all other poach tracks and laid down some screamers in the fresh that sprayed so big I thought I was waterskiing. That was cool, too.