Park City is Insane!

Last weekend one of my buddies was planning a ski retreat to Park City, Utah for the Congressman he works for and he asked me if I would be willing to staff the Congressman and his guests all expenses paid. I graciously accepted and we hopped on a flight to Salt Lake City Friday afternoon.

We toured Olympic park and were able to ride the Olympic bobsled track. Our driver was none other than Pat Brown, the coach of the Jamaican bobsled team who John Candy portrayed in the film "Cool Runnings". Much to my surprise, Pat Brown was not big and fat but rather short and stocky and very quiet. My sled finished with a top speed of 81 MPH and a time of 52 seconds and some change. It was the most frightening thing I have ever done in my life and the bruises on my arms are a testament to that.

After bobsleding we decided that we wanted to learn how to snowboard but instead of paying for a lesson we thought we could learn on our own. Big mistake. I fell so many times it took me almost 2 hours to reach the bottom of the mountain. It's not as easy as it looks. In one instance I somehow manuevered myself into an ungroomed portion of a run that I had no business being on. After I wiped out in waist deep powder I realized that I couldn't get up and the more I struggled the deeper I sunk into the snow drift. One of my friends yelled at me to unclip my boots from the board and climb out of the snow drift. It seemed like a good idea until I pulled my legs free of the devil board and it took off on its own down the mountain leaving me alone with no transportation. I tried to chase after it but the snow was so deep that I just kept falling down. It was like the scene out of Rocky 4 when Stallone trained for his fight with Dolph Lundgren by running in waist deep snow. The combination of being out of shape and the high altitude left my legs burning and me gasping for air.

I finally reached my board which had traveled about 400 yards down the run settling in the center of a crowded blue (intermediate) run. Exhausted, I strapped my board back on and slowly made my way to the bottom of the hill. The most embarrassing moment was not watching kids half my age zipping past me but rather watching a six year old boy crying in his father's arms because he fell and watching his father point at me and whisper something to him that apparenty made him feel better about himself because he stopped crying. I could picture the conversation:

Little Boy: Wah, I hate skiing, Wah!
Father: Look at that guy, he sucks and he's like 5 times your age.
Little Boy: Do you think he's retarded?
Father: Probably.

Sunday we decided to skip the snowboarding and rent snowmobiles for the day. This was by far the highlight of the trip. We took trails and climbed to about 9,000 ft with little incident. A few folks tipped their snowmobiles and one guy drove his into a bush but other than that it was a blast.

The people on the trip were pretty cool. One person of note (Other than Congressman Kennedy) was former Duke basketball player Reggie Love. He was a guest of one of the paying guests on the trip and a future Barack O'Bama staffer come new year. Apparently he also played football at Duke and was recently cut by the Dallas Cowboys so he decided to take a job in politics. You may remember him better after a quick google search of his name.

If you ever have a chance to go to Park City jump at it. The people are awesome. The town is just like Iowa City. There are a ton of bars and restaurants, people walk everywhere and PBR in a can will only cost you $2 at just about every bar you go to. One quick tip, if the bartender asks you if you are with the wedding party, say"YES".

Peace and Love.