From sun ☀️ to snow ❄️

I spent the holidays with my sister’s family in Arizona. Humans are tribal creatures, so no matter how much I try to hack my own behavioral patterns to optimize for the long term results I seek, I can’t help but enjoy the warmth of being around family.

I have an older brother and younger sister as well, and they both flew in from the east coast to get together for a few weeks. Sadly, we haven’t all been together in one place for many years, because life and career can get busy and take priority.

My current plan is to slow travel the world over a few years, so there is a good chance I won’t see them in a long time, so we took a lot of group photos by the Christmas tree, and tried to cherish our time together.

On Dec 31st, I packed my things back into my car and drove to Albuquerque for a night, followed by the drive to Colorado the next day. I booked an airbnb for the month of Jan in Breckenridge to make use of my Epic ski pass.

I’m able to ski black diamonds now, but I mostly taught myself how to ski last winter. I started from the bunny slopes, then greens, blues, and blacks. I’d watch YouTube tutorials on how to properly carve, ski moguls, crud, ice, and powder. I was always self taught in school, so I didn’t see why I couldn’t self teach here as well. So far so good. I’m too cheap to pay an instructor $300/hr anyway.

A part of me wanted to learn to ski as a signifier to myself and others that I’d made it. Growing up poor, we never had the privilege to go on ski trips, and I always wondered what I was missing. Initially, I didn’t get the hype. All they’re doing is sliding down the hill, so why go through all of the hassle of flying/driving there, dealing with altitude sickness, and putting on all of this clunky expensive equipment in the cold?

But once I got over that hump in self teaching, it clicked; this is an incredibly fun sport. I get why rich people love doing it. It isn’t so much about the speed of rushing down the hill (at least not for me), it’s the shredding feeling when you’re on the edges of your skis and your body is slanted but you don’t tip over because you’ve mastered the proper balance between your speed, the texture of the snow, and your body weight. There’s something deeply satisfying about it.

Skiing can be a spiritual experience. You have to understand snow to be a great skier. I am still learning, but there’s so much to unpack here. My friends who are avid skiers talk about snow patterns like seasoned meteorologists haha.

On the last day of Jan, I plan to fly to Sapporo, Japan to ski the “JaPow” there. I’ll probably spend a week or so in the city of Sapporo first to explore the area and get over my jet lag before hitting the slopes.

It would be nice to date around through all of this, as the company of a nice lady makes every experience better, but I haven’t had much time to swipe around on dating apps lately, as planning this lifestyle can be really time consuming, and I’ve had to look out for a close friend who ended up homeless after a series of bad decisions.

I haven’t posted a vlog on the channel in a while, and I figured I should post one soon. So stay tuned for that!