*By “Special Offer,” we mean “Obsequious Solicitation.”
It’s not like we haven’t tried.
In our tireless efforts to increase our gross receipts, we’ve resorted to double-billing, even triple-billing, but our over-educated readership must employ a small army of highly trained accountants to heartlessly snuff out this nearly legal initiative. (If you would like to avoid the menace of multiple billing and its associated surcharges, we have an insurance plan just for this almost certain eventuality. For details, see below, in the space provided after the last paragraph.)
To bolster our resume, we’ve declared ourselves the uncontested winner of prestigious awards (the Stump-Bertoni Award for Excellence comes to mind) that turn out, upon more scrupulous inspection, to have been fraudulently concocted by a dummy organization. (That we also created. But with only with the purest of intentions!) Despite the laurels we’ve accrued in this totally transparent process, our membership rolls have gone down. (Italics supplied to make our plight seem appropriately poignant.)
Because we are constantly being pestered to provide our visitation numbers on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, we engaged the services of trained professionals to address our deficiencies in this department. (I am not making this up.) Despite months of effort by social media savants, we didn’t gain a single subscriber. Whatever activity this initiative engendered remained within the confines of the site whose membership we were attempting to woo into our orbit. In short, we went fishing in an ocean teeming with fish and didn’t get a bite.
Just when we feared all avenues to enhancing our income stream were blockaded, we received several urgent messages from one “George Dawson” promising that “Experian Confirms $307,600 Credit Line for Realskiers!” No personal guarantees required! And here I thought I was up to my knees in skullduggery. I’m a piker compared to the likes of Mr. Dawson (and dozens of others of his ilk who have reached out to us with similar appeals). While the offer is indeed tempting, some tingling in my lizard brain warns me that Experian’s keepers may one day want their money back.
We know what you’re thinking.
“How much should I donate? What’s considered appropriate?”
Logic can only take you so far down this road. Science, trying to be helpful, informs us that there is no single answer, due to the quantum nature of, well, everything.
Such foggy thinking may appease the curiosity of the feeble-minded masses, but those of us who dare to think the improbable know that when words fail us, we turn to math for solutions. To find how much it’s widely considered to be appropriate to give, abide by this simple, 100% recycled, organic, numerology-inspired formula:
- Add up the numerals in your date of birth.
Example: June 6, 1956 = 6 + 6 + 21 = 33. - Multiply by your age. 33 x 68 = 2244
Revel in the eerie mysticism of the total, which won’t tell you how to live, but will suggest an amount to consider donating, depending on where one puts the decimal point. - You’ll be tempted to divide this generous sum until it is much, much smaller, a syndrome known as “Musk’s Fallacy.” Don’t fall for it.
Keep in mind this is the most money you or your heirs will ever pay. (This time.)
How to Raise the Dough You’ll Be Sending Us
Now that we’ve established the scientific foundations for sending us a fat slice or your net worth, permit me to suggest a few ways to raise said funds. (Cue the Christmas music to imbue these suggestions with the Spirit of Irrational Spending.)
- Charge your offspring for financial advice. You know how much financial advisors make? I don’t either, but I’ll bet it’s a pantload. Your kids likewise won’t have any idea, so you can charge the seed of your loins anything you like. Best of all, just like astrologers, you don’t have to ever be right!
- Create a home maintenance account to which you contribute every time you mow your lawn or shovel your driveway. Refer to these activities as “landscaping” and you can charge a pretty penny for it. When the accumulated funds start to become an accounting headache, forward the lot of it to me. (I mean, “us.”)
- You could make boundless fortunes in crypto. What could possibly go wrong?
- There’s always another “George Dawson.” His current offer is $260,000, no strings attached…
The mechanics of giving are simple. Right there on the Realskiers.com home page is a lavishly illustrated Tip Jar. Go tap-tap on the Tip Jar icon and you’ll go directly to the head of the line.
Now all you have to do is not yield to panic nor surrender to attention-sapping distractions. If you live long enough, your mind will eventually wander about on its own. This is not the time to indulge it.
Stay focused.
Find the Tip Jar icon.
Be absurdly generous.
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Road Tripping
Among the many dissatisfactions of this most unusual season is that travel beyond one’s local environs has been roundly discouraged. Don’t get me wrong: I’m grateful down to my socks that we’re allowed to ski locally, and my version of same is pretty sweet. Pardon the plug, but between Alpine Meadows, Squaw Valley and Mt. Rose I have a smorgasbord of savory choices.
But skiing close to home and skiing on the road are two different beasts. Nothing is the same, really, and therein lies a great deal of the road trip’s charms.
To shed light on my premise, allow me to pull back the veil on my favorite away game, an annual pilgrimage to Little Cottonwood Canyon. By the end of this brief travelogue you will probably hate me, so please fill your vessel of good will to the rim before proceeding.
It’s About Nothing
In the last week of January,2009 I was able to spend a few days skiing in Little Cottonwood Canyon, which is always cathartic for my ravaged soul. The conditions were all over the map, the mountains having experienced a long, hot spell followed by rain, grapple, wet snow and finally dry snow driven by winds that could flense an adult walrus in a few minutes. Couldn’t have been better.
I had been preparing for the trip for weeks, psychologically. Two back surgeries the previous winter had reduced my training regimen from semi-annual to non-existent. Scheduling conflicts such as work kept me from visiting the areas that abound at home near Lake Tahoe, so I had zero ski days on a body with more fat on it than a French duck. I had as much chance of surviving Snowbird and Alta as a rib roast in a piranha tank.
Fortunately, the Lord is merciful, anti-inflammatory drugs are powerful and there are techniques that allow one to block out pain. There are also many wonderful people in this world with which to ski, kind people who stand quietly by, pretending to be in awe of Nature, while my chest heaves so violently in its futile quest for oxygen that tiny lung particles break lose and make for the exits. One such person is Guru Dave Powers, a man whose passion for the sport hasn’t diminished after thousands of days of riding gravity down the infinitely variable slopes and crannies of Snowbird. The Goo knows this hill, and in knowing it well knows so much more.
The Making of a Skier, Chapter XII: Putting Words into the Mouth of God & Other Mid-Life Adventures
When I was cut adrift by Head on June 13, 2001, my once glowing prospects dimmed considerably. The date is etched in memory because I hosted a small soirée that evening in honor of my darling wife’s 50th birthday. One of the attendees was Paul Hochman, who would play several roles in my life as I wandered in the wilderness of unemployment during what were supposed to be my peak earning years.
During the gaping hole in my career that spanned 2001-2011, I would eventually spend every cent of my inheritance, plus most of what I’d saved from earlier bouts with gainful employment, just keeping the household afloat. Despite a river of red ink, my resume would suggest that I was not only commercially active during this epoch, but had my hand in all sorts of ventures.
