Flight Lessons

As someone who has flown at all times and in every possible condition, I can say with certainty that the absolute best time to fly is 11 a.m. on a sunny weekday. You breeze through the metal detector in a set of striped socks, you amble onto the plane with a toasted sesame bagel, and you're asleep in a pool of sunshine before you hit 10,000 feet. Good stuff.

Adapt Or Die

I'm curled up in a nest of crumpled receipts right now, basically in self-employed-contractor tax hell. However, I'm stoked on this movie I watched the other night. Hanna—a sort of Darwinian thriller with luminous colors, sets, and sounds. Plus, Kate Blanchett. If I could be any actress it'd prob be her because she's complex and bad ass—more than just a set of tittays.

Mid-Winter Mini Escape

When I was just a little bear cub in the mountains of Colorado, I had no idea that I'd someday grow up to live in one of the year-round-awesomest and yet life-givingly-dismal-and-mold-farming-during-the-winter cities in the country. But here I am—Portland. And around about February, escape becomes advisable—nay, ESSENTIAL, to mental survival.

So ... after gambling all my remaining frequent flyer miles, I was in Aspen at the home of one T. Byrnes putting on my snowboard boots after almost way too long. We rode Ajax through cold and ice, and then aprés-ed at Little Nell. Too much fun to elaborate.

Gondy laps with Trish—they're good for one's spirit.

Ricky's room. You know yr ballin when you have your own cider-making station.

For those who don't know, the term "aprés" is a French euphemism for "drinking after riding." It's a nice way to end up in your snowboard clothes past dark.

This ain't vintage—the spirit of the poma lift is alive and well at Snowmass.

A 22-foot vert ramp made out of snow. Scccarrry.

One of those moons that makes you shoot a blurry pic with your cell phone while driving 80 on the freeway.

So Long, ’77 Sierra

We sold our ’77 Sierra Camper Classic the other day. Asking price: $875. Buying price: $500. That's life. The heater coil was revealed to be bad, along with a slow leak in the rear right and so on ad infinitum. She's 34 years old, friends, and that's how it goes.

Not to anthropomorphize the thing anymore than I have to but it went to a farm, not to a junkyard, and that's nice to think about—the old truck hauling manure and sleeping out under the stars.

Moby Duck!

I just finished reading this baby. The premise is that a shipping container traveling form Asia goes overboard with 28,000 rubber bath toys, and these self-same toys travel thousands of miles on complicated oceanic currents, washing ashore everywhere from Alaska and Hawaii to Maine, Nova Scotia, and the United Kingdom.

I foolishly thought this to be an adventure travel tale of the kind I like to read, but slowly, over the course of many pages, I began to aprehend Moby Duck as a somber book about the savagely polluted state of our oceans, about the mythical indestructability of plastics, and about how when you throw something away, there just IS no away. It's not a feel-good story necessarily, but I mean as humans in charge of our own destinies, we should know this stuff.

Anyhoo, chew on this: The top trash items most frequently found in the ocean:

1: cigarette butts

2: paper pieces

3: plastic pieces

4: styrofoam

5: glass pieces

6: plastic food bags

7: plastic caps and lids

8: metal beverage cans

9: plastic straws

10: glass beverage bottles

11: plastic beverage bottles

12: styrofoam cups