David Goes a-Viking

After spending eight and a half months in the wilderness of Austria, it was high time for me to begin the strenuous odyssey back into civilization. I planned a trip that would take me from Klagenfurt to Vienna, whereupon I would fly into Oslo, go by train into Stockholm, and then go to Copenhagen. Thence, I planned to go experience the wonders of Scotland for nine nights, and then I would have four nights in Reykjavik, Iceland, before catching a flight I found for all of $212 to JFK and be back in America's loving embrace. 

Right there, baby.

Before my three-and-a-half week globetrotting expedition could begin, however, I needed to pack up everything I had lived with for the past 8 and a half months and de-register from Klagenfurt. I divided up my various belongings between things I could afford to mail home, things I needed to take into the carry-on bag that I would essentially be living out of on my trip, and the rest, which would go into my giant checked suitcase. I had to send my school bag in the box home because the budget airlines I would be flying with only allow one carry-on item. Because I would need the passport I kept in my school bag's front pocket all year to de-register with the authorities, I had to wait until I ran that errand to box it up.

I plan to go to Vienna on Saturday, June 1, so on Friday, May 31, I go to the Registration Office to de-register from good old Ferdinand-Jergitsch-Straße 18. I fill out the form and hand it to the woman working at the office, who tells me that I've written down the wrong address. I tell her that she's the one with the wrong address, considering my personal knowledge of the subject. While she concedes the point, she also insists that I de-register from the house where I'm registered. I de-register from Ferdinand-Georg-Waldmüller-Straße 18, which I did not know existed until that precise moment, and continue on the day's errands.

After closing my bank account and failing an attempt to file my taxes, I go back home to pack up my school bag into my bright yellow Austrian Post box, reminding myself all the while to take out my passport before I send it back to South Carolina. I get back into my room, where I have the distinct, vivid memory of taking my passport out of the front pocket, placing it gently into a side pocket of my carry-on bag, throwing out other papers and various useless things which have accumulated in my school bag throughout the year, and checking the side pocket of my carry-on bag afterwards to make sure that I had, in fact, transferred my passport from the one bag to the other. 

All of this is pure fantasy. Two days before leaving Austria for good to travel into six countries in three and a half weeks, I mailed my passport home. 

Two days later, in Vienna, three hours before my flight is set to take off to Oslo, I'm walking to the car of the niece of one of my co-workers as she's about to drive me to the airport, when she jokingly asks me if I have my passport, because that's one of those questions you ask people under the reasonable assumption that they are not inept morons. Completely under the illusion that I had indeed, for one shining moment, acted as a competent individual and, at the very least, not mailed my passport home, I go to check the side pocket of my bag, expecting to pull out a passport in triumph and continue to the airport on my unstoppable march through northern Europe. In this hallucinatory state, however, I neglect to account for the fact that I am, indeed, me, and my triumphal passport presentation does not happen. Nor does it happen when I check the other side pocket, and right now me and Kati have found ourselves in a bit of a pickle, now haven't we.

The airport and consulate are in the same direction, so we get into the car and call the airline company to see whether or not I need a passport to get onto my flight. Unable to reach the airline company, we call the airport itself, and they helpfully hang up on me.

With this new information, we make the executive decision to go to the consulate. We find the consulate has closed an hour before, and call the number the sign outside tells us to call in such a situation. A woman picks up, and I explain that I have found myself without a passport (neglecting the whole "mailed it home" aspect) and need to catch a flight to Norway in less than three hours. She sets me up for an appointment the next day, but then says that, because Norway is in the Schengen Area, I "might be able to risk it." For Dave "Snake-Eyes" Wile, that's music to my ears. 

We go to the airport, and while waiting in line to check in to my flight, I check every single orifice of every bag in my possession, praying that my passport might reconstitute itself in my presence. Because it's too busy being halfway across the Atlantic Ocean, that doesn't happen. We get to the front of the check-in line, and I show the woman working the counter a photocopy of my passport that I travel with just in case I somehow lose my passport, laughably hypothetical though that scenario may be, and my Austrian residency permit, while Kati convinces her to let me onto the flight. After about 5 or 10 minutes of angering everyone behind me in line, I'm finally allowed to check in. By the time she weighs my bag, the check-in woman is too exhausted to give a damn that it's 5 kilos overweight. Against all odds, we're heading to Oslo. Buckle up, kids.

Who needs passports when you've packed plastic fish homeless men have given you?

I land in Oslo in the dead of night, or at least when the orange glow is at its lowest point on the horizon, avoid all passport controls, and cry silently into a $10 7-Eleven hotdog. I get to the hostel, sleep, and go sightseeing the next day, which was a Tuesday. Considering that I leave on Thursday morning, I decide that Wednesday should be a decent time to go to the American consulate and work this whole passport ordeal out.

I get to the embassy, where the guard tells me that everyone inside is too busy to deal with me, until I point out the gravitas of my situation, namely that "I've just lost my passport and am leaving for Stockholm at 7:30 AM tomorrow." He eventually relents, and the guy working the Passport and Emergency Services counter gives me some forms to fill out to formally claim a lost passport and to apply for a new one. Unfortunately, the earliest he can make an appointment for me is the next day at 8:30 AM. However, since I'm taking the train to Stockholm instead of flying, I "might be able to risk it." 

Off to Stockholm it is then, Snake-Eyes. While it's certainly easier to travel undocumented by train than by air, it's also not guaranteed that a vagabond such as myself could travel completely unharassed. Between Munich and Klagenfurt, for example, after a weekend spent prepping the LSAT via homelessness, I was woken up and subjected to an utterly ridiculous and dehumanizing search of my belongings and person by the border security to clear me of all suspicion of intentions of terrorism. This ride wasn't going to be a cakewalk. I buy a sandwich with the last of my Norwegian kroner from a woman with the voice of a Siren and head to the tracks.

I get on the train and pick out a nice seat in a booth for four with two sets of two seats facing each other and a table in between. We cross into Sweden, and no border control board the train. I'm feeling pretty comfortable about my transit situation, and start to relax and enjoy the Swedish landscape. Suddenly, some absolute fuckface does literally the worst thing one human being has done to another person in history. This complete asshole gets on the train, and with the two seats across from me perfectly unoccupied and two-thirds of a train to pick from, sits down right the fuck next to me.

Half of my vision of the Swedish countryside is now completely unavailable to me, obscured by this immaculate prick; I've got to deal with my thighs rubbing up against his inconsiderate fucking thighs; he's breathing all up and in my train air with that offensive mouth of his, that despicable affront to evolution. I am seething. I consider crawling under the table to sit on the other side of the booth, but decide that would be too drastic, and continue stewing in a white rage. I'm so angry I just go to sleep, and I don't wake up until someone taps me on the shoulder to inform me the train has reached its final destination in Stockholm.

Once I get to Stockholm, I find my hostel, and decide to go find the embassy before I'm informed that today is, perchance, Sweden's National Day. The Royal Palace is open to the public, there's gonna be a parade, it's about to be nuts in Stockholm; the passport affair can wait. 

Some members of the Royal Family waving hello to me.

The next morning I trudge on down to the embassy, where I once again do my "Hey, whoa, my passport's suddenly disappeared! How crazy is that?!" schtick, and this time the guard is just a prick to me. The embassy's busy dealing with the fallout from all the rioting business, so he can't give me an appointment until 9:30 AM on Monday, which just so happens to be the day after I'm scheduled to be in Copenhagen. Worse, he doesn't tell me I might be able to risk anything. In fact, when I suggest such a desperate maneuver, he strongly condemns any notion I have that I might be able to travel without travel documents, and tells me to go file a police report, reschedule my flights, and come back Monday. Certainly not one of the mavericks America's employed at their other embassies.

I go file a police report which says, translating from the Swedish: "Wile states that he lost his American passport in unknown ways; the passport was in one of his bags." If you consider it "unknown" how a human adult could mail his passport back to his home country two days before traveling, and also take into account the fact that the passport was indeed in one of my bags, which was in a box on its merry way stateside, then we can at least consider this a half-truth. 

I spend Saturday terrified about having to convince someone at the airport to let me leave Sweden for Copenhagen without a passport, and come up with a contingency plan should they find my arguments less than persuasive. I'd have to pay another $25 for the bus back from the airport, but then I would go to the train station and buy a ticket to Copenhagen, because people under 25 can apparently buy train tickets at reduced prices less than 24 hours before the train's departure times. It would cost some money, but certainly less than rescheduling a flight. Bottom line, security guard at the American Embassy in Stockholm: if I'm still in Sweden on Monday, it'll be in chains.

Sunday morning, I catch the bus to the embassy, roll out to the airport, and everything is self-check-in. The self-check-in kiosk even printed a checked-luggage tag out for me to put on my own damn bag. Just for future reference, adoring faithful, those tags are much more difficult to put on bags than the people who check your luggage would have you believe. It's a remarkably long sticker, and as soon as you lose your alignment, may God have mercy on your mortal soul. Needless to say, I lost my alignment faster than my '92 Camry does after a tune-up. The bar code's ended up on a different side of the tag than the destination airport code, parts of the tag have been squeezed into a bow-tie-macaroni-like configuration, I can't even pull off the damn receipt part of it without the whole mechanism descending into an absolute farce; it was pure chaos down there.

By comparison, this assault on aesthetics looks downright professional.

I'm embarrassed to show this shambolic display to the woman at the check-in counter. She begrudgingly accepts this mess of a tagged bag after I get it down to an acceptable weight, and sends me to security.

At security, my delusion that I would somehow get through the airport without being requested to show any form of ID gets predictably crushed. Luckily, I have a speech prepared for the moment. I pull out my passport photocopy, my Austrian residency permit, my application for a new passport from Norway, and my Swedish police report, and, handing them to the guy checking passports in respective order, let it fly. "I've lost my passport; this is a photocopy of my passport, this is a residency permit that says I'm allowed to be in Europe [no it doesn't], I've already started the application for a new passport, and here's a police report saying that the passport is lost." 

He checks the photocopy, and asks me, "Have you contacted your embassy?"

Oh no. A question. I hadn't been expecting that. End of the line, kid. 

Wait just a second there, Snake-Eyes, I think to myself, you actually have contacted your embassy. Hoping to avoid a situation like the ones I'd run into in all the other countries on my U.S. Embassies in Scandinavia World Tour '13, I actually sent an e-mail explaining my situation to the U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen (leaving out, of course, the detail that I knew good and well where my passport was) in an attempt to get an appointment for once before I was scheduled to leave a country. Sure, they never responded to it, but, if I've done nothing else, I have indeed contacted my embassy.

"Yes I have," I say, authoritatively, because now I'm in the driver's seat of this conversation. And just like that, he lets me through to the gate.  

Stockholm Arlanda Airport security.

I get to Copenhagen on a Sunday, so the embassy's closed. Monday morning, I waltz on up to the embassy, and the guard gargles something that I can't understand. I stand there silently and look confused at him. He repeats whatever he was saying in the same incomprehensible manner, and I keep on squinting at him in the same idiotic manner.  Somehow, on my walk to the embassy, when a policeman with a riot shield asked me something in Danish, at that moment I was perfectly capable of asking him to repeat himself; he asked me whether I'd seen a man walking around the cemetery with a sword (I had not, but I would let him know if I did). However, on this occasion, I did not have that degree of wherewithal.

I continue to stare dumbly at him, and finally he points me in a direction and tells me to go stand there. I go over there for a while, but then I realize that he just thought I was being an ass and wanted me to go be an ass in a location that wasn't directly in front of his face. It dawns on me that I should just ask him again, so I explain to him that I was not, in fact, intending to be an ass, but had just not understood him. He responds, slowly and deliberately, "What can I do for you?"

Ugh, that is so what he was saying. I explain my passport predicament, and he eventually lets me inside, telling the guard working the metal detector to make sure he speaks slowly to me. I get to the waiting room, and eventually my number gets called. I go to a desk and hand the woman there all my various documents and $135. She goes through them, and after a long silence, she looks up at me. "You don't have a passport?" she clarifies. "And you got through Norway, Sweden, and Denmark?"

"Yup!" I answer, proudly. The woman just sighs, the utter disgust with modern European border security measures palpable, and turns around to go file my paperwork. 

She comes back, and tells me that if I return to the embassy sometime between 9 AM and noon, I should have a replacement passport waiting for me. When I come back the next day, I mosey on through because I'm a rising star on the Scandinavian embassy circuit, and the consul signs my replacement passport into effect. 

After 8 days traveling, entering 3 different countries, visiting 4 consulates and skipping out on appointments set at 3 of them, lying and telling half-truths to 4 embassies, 2 airports, and 1 police force, I was a documented traveler once again. 

Despite the fact that a replacement passport looks faker than a pornstar's orgasm, I get in and out of Scotland without incident. I get into Iceland on June 21, and check into my hostel in Reykjavik. The girl working the check-in desk asks to see my passport, and I proudly present it to her, in the same manner I had intended to do three weeks prior while walking to Kati's car. I put it back in my bag and go upstairs to get my stuff settled in my room. Just on a hunch, I check to make sure my passport is still in my bag. It isn't. I check both side pockets, and empty them completely. I go rummaging through the main pocket, even though there's no way I put it there, and come up empty. 

I run back downstairs, and ask the girl if she ever handed me my passport back after I showed it to her. She replies that not only did she give it back, but she remembers me putting it back into a pocket in my bag. This is pure fantasy.

I go back and forth between the lobby on the second floor and my room on the fourth floor maybe three or four times, and still have no passport. I'm beginning to become pretty irked by the fact that my bag has developed a forcefield around it that not only rejects my passport, but convinces people that I've managed to put my passport safely within its confines. 

That's it, I realize. It hit the forcefield, bounced off harmlessly, and fell on the floor somewhere in the lobby. It's just science. I run back downstairs, and there, right underneath the front desk, lies my passport in all of its glory. I hold my passport up to the girl, sigh exasperatedly, turn around, and wordlessly go back upstairs while she chuckles at my carelessness. If she only knew. 

David Hits the Slopes

I am not always a graceful man. Don't get me wrong, adoring faithful: your mental image of me gallantly strolling along these callous streets with the swagger of some rap star/cowboy Megazord and the savoir faire of a person who knows what savoir faire means aren't entirely inaccurate. It's just that occasionally, like one occasion in the supermarket about 3 days ago, I might happen to confuse the hand holding the shower gel with the hand holding the fruit and stab myself square in the eyeball with a banana. We can't be on all the time. 

"I'm an animal: half man, half mammal." Remember that gem, Cowboy Jay-Z?

However, while in Austria I've resolved to put those momentary lapses in grace aside and learn me how to ski. Everyone in Austria skis. It's just a necessary part of life for these people. Half of them slalomed down the birth canal, and the other half have never looked their fathers in the eye. Once my students hear that I've never skied, they all stare at me with wonder and bemusement and vague suspicion, mouths agape, distraught as to how I could have reached this ripe old age while never once strapping metal slats to my feet two kilometers above sea level and checking to see if someone had left the gravity on. When one is in the Alps, one skis. When in Rome, and all that. 

Elephants, Hannibal? It's like you're not even trying. No wonder the Romans didn't like you much.

Luckily, about a month and a half ago, Klagenfurt's fairgrounds hosted a winter sport flea market, so I already found myself in possession of some second-hand skis, poles, boots, and skiing attire consisting of no less than 5 color tones but heavily stressing the purples and turquoise. All of this equipment only set me back around €40, truly a small price to pay to declare such a strong fashion statement. Andy and Amanda also purchased some skis and skiwear. Andy grabbed a silver-gray onesie with alternating yellow and red squares across the shoulders suitable for the amount of space travel he planned to embark upon, while Amanda picked out an oversized matching neon green-and-purple jacket and pants set to smuggle out any musically talented family of political dissenters she might come across. You gotta look good to ski good, kids. 

After languishing in a corner in my room for six weeks, my skis were finally called into action when Pip (slave name Philippa) asked via the Facebooks if anyone would be down for skiing on Friday, January 11th. Immediately, Andy, Amanda, and I responded that we were, indeed, down. Even though I inexplicably hadn't yet bought a hat and gloves to match my outfit, it was high time to see what all this skiing fuss was about. 

Friday morning, I meet Andy and Amanda at the train station at around 10:40 AM. I notice that, while I've worn street clothes and packed my skisuit in my backpack, they've gone ahead and worn theirs to the station. All at once, the true error of my ways became starkly evident: I was the asshole wearing shoes on the beach. I was a goddamn shoobie. Tragically, my shoobie-ship would only increase throughout the day. 

I don't know how it's come to this, Otto Rocket.

We went to the grocery store in the station, bought some food for lunch, and hopped on the train to Villach. After getting in at just past 11:30 AM, a bus would take us to Annenheim, and from there we could get our ski passes for the Gerlitzen. Unfortunately, because planning ahead is for losers, we find out at the bus station in Villach that the bus to Annenheim doesn't come for an hour and a half. We take advantage of this break to eat lunch and grab some noon-time beers from a nearby cafe. While sipping said beers, the three of us realize that if we truly want to ski like champions, it isn't enough merely to look like we just waltzed out of 1986; we had to literally waltz out of 1986. 

Since only Andy's onesie was capable of actual time travel, we were compelled to take on new personas. Amanda, Andy, and I became Tiffany, Blaine, and Brent, respectively. Blaine would challenge any movie's protagonist that happened to cross his path to a race down "The Black Mamba," a slope so named because of a creative wordplay incorporating its level of difficulty, shape, and mortality rate, while Brent would shout less-than-original insults at the unsuspecting film character and high-five Blaine with douche-tastic regularity. After a montage emphasizing the protagonist's dedication and Blaine's arrogance, Blaine would suffer an inevitable though still shocking defeat. Thereupon Tiffany would leave him and run ecstatically into the winner's passionate embrace. Fade to black, bitches; we were gonna be the greatest skiers to ever conquer the Gerlitzen.

When we eventually reach the mountain, Blaine and I have to go get our flea market skis adjusted to fit our boots. In an unusual turn of events, Andy bought the defective skis and mine worked perfectly fine. Looking back on it, it appears that when Andy helped me pick out my skis, the Fates became confused as to who purchased which pair of skis, forcing them to take a 50-50 shot on which pair to destroy for their twisted pleasure. Sadly, Andy's skis paid the price for whatever karmic evil I did to deserve the constant ass-kicking which I've been getting a steady diet of since I've entered this God-forsaken land. 

The only thing in Klagenfurt open 24/7. 

For this hardship, Blaine, Brent is truly sorry.  

After Blaine rents himself a pair of skis, we meet up with Pip, and I find the nearest bathroom to change out of my shoobie costume. I exit the bathroom a brand new Brent, a Brent in skis and not shoes, a Brent who could hold his head up high until he realized that he left his ski pass in the wool coat which was now tucked snugly into his backpack. I dig it out while a nice little line of non-shoobies forms behind me, judging my every shoobish move. Suddenly, I notice I'm stranded, abandoned by Pip, Blaine, and Tiff. I would have to brave the first ski lift of my life alone. 

I climb in and hold on for dear life, thoughts bouncing between wondering how the woman in front of me had managed to snag a chair with foot rests to put her skis on and wrapping my mind around how so few people had died from falling from these unrestrained death traps. At the end of the lift, I see the woman in front of me raise a metal bar above her head. I look up. Guess that answers both of those questions. 

Soon, however, the ride was over for me. Upon getting out of the lift, my keen observational skills duly note that, despite not knowing how to ski, I have been thrust into skiing against my will. My keen observational skills soon also notice that I haven't the vaguest idea as to how to stop this unintentional skiing. Quickly approaching Blaine, who has somehow managed to hit the brakes on his skis, I panic and essentially just kind of sit down on my ass. Boom: stopped. 

I stand back up, and Pip points me and Tiffany, who had only skied once as a 14-year-old, to the easiest slope on the mountain. I attempt to mosey my skis on over to the entrance gate, and proceed to get nowhere. Every time I move a ski forward, it goes right back to where it had been before once I have to shift my weight to the other ski. I start sliding backwards. People are beginning to stare at the incompetent moron moonwalking in their midst. Tiff is already almost at the entrance to the slope. I shout at Blaine and Pip for guidance, but they're already long gone down the mountainside. It feels like quicksand: the more I struggle, the deeper I sink. I have to have been here for almost ten minutes. I am going to die here. 

"Fight against the sadness," indeed.

My only other option being a slow death on a mountainside, I take off my skis, pick them up, and just walk to the damn entrance. My figurative shoobie-ship has become literal. These were low times for Brent. Since those fateful shoe-borne steps, he's tied his pastel-colored sweater sleeves a little more tightly around his neck and his windmill high-fives have been a little less righteous. His Duran Duran albums seem to hold within them deeper meanings and greater truths. Wiser, yes, but at what cost?

I get behind Tiffany in the line for the beginners' slope, grab the rope tow when it comes around, put it between my legs when Blaine yells at me from afar to do that, and let it pull me to the top of the slope. I let go of the rope, and quickly remember that stopping my skis is not in my repertoire. Like the long march of Death, I slowly yet unavoidably float out across the top of the slope, stabbing my poles into the mountainside to no avail, until I slip over the edge of the trail and, once more, onto my ass. 

Recap Ratio:
Times Brent's Skis Have Moved : Times Brent's Been on His Ass = 2 : 2

This little episode ushers in a pretty comic 5 minute period wherein I find myself unable to climb out of the ditch in which I'm standing, with Blaine attempting to give me advice on climbing uphill sideways which I prove absolutely incapable of following. Eventually, I once again have to settle for rage quitting and taking my skis off before I can extricate myself from the situation. 

Once unditched, I emerge at the top of a slope, ready to hit the ski button and tear the Gerlitzen apart. I stick my poles into the ground and push off. For the first time in my life, I'm skiing.

And boy, am I skiing. I kind of curve to the left. I kind of curve back to the right. I go straight. I keep going straight. I'm zooming right along, and holy fuck why hasn't anyone told me how to stop this death machine yet. I'm out of control. Something has gone terribly wrong. I bail, but survive due to the miracle that is my ass. 

While one must look good to ski good, one must apparently also ski good to ski good.

Not one to give up so easily on a beginners' slope, I get right back on the horse, go back to the top of the hill, and Pip and I run some braking drills. My third time through I manage to maintain control of the skis during the run, and pizza the living Christ out of them at the bottom until they've submitted to my will. The heavens rejoice in my achievement, and I raise my arms to the skies in triumph. It's time for the big boy slope. I take three steps following Blaine and somehow fall down. Doesn't count, the heavens didn't see it.

Recap Ratio:
Times Brent's Skis Have Moved : Times Brent's Been on His Ass = 6 : 5

Despite my less-than-exemplary record on the beginners' slope, Blaine maintains that the only real way to learn how to ski is by going down something with a decent gradient to it. We mosey on over to a more advanced slope, and Blaine takes off, followed by Tiff. Pip tells me to try and cut back and forth across the mountainside, so I figure I should listen to her. Perhaps now is a good time to mention that it hasn't snowed in more than a month and that the mountain is covered in a solid sheet of ice.

I zoom off. I curve a little left. I curve a little right. I curve a little left, and then a little right again. I'm feeling good. I do that cool thing that I've seen skiers in the Olympics do when they put their poles underneath their arms to minimize wind resistance. 

That's the ticket. Out of my way, wind.

That was an objectively stupid thing to do, but pretty in-character for Brent. I soon notice 4 things:

1. I'm going way too fast for my own good.
2. I have no means by which to rectify Fact #1.
3. There's a whole lot of mountain left, and I'm only gonna be getting faster.
4. I either have to bail, or die at the bottom of the second easiest slope on the mountain.

So I resolve to crash, and my God was it violent. I hit a solid 3 or 4 complete rotations, my skis fly off, my poles are strewn about, and Pip has to come behind me and help me retrieve all my various accoutrements. This exact process happens 2 more times on that slope, until I finally stumble my way to the bottom. The experience was a little jarring, to say the least. 

Recap Ratio: 

Times Brent's Skis Have Moved : Times Brent's Been on His Ass = 9 : 8

For some reason, after that inspiring display of natural skiing talent, Blaine and Pip decide that Tiff and I should try our hands at descending from the top of the Gerlitzen. We ride up the lift to the summit, and then Tiff and I make the fatal mistake of looking down the mountain. We tell them they can go on without us. 

Before her descent, Pip warns us that we have 40 minutes to get down to the bottom of the mountain before the ski lifts close. We were about to go down and practice on the beginners' slope again, but then, apparently forgetting the overall shape of mountains, I notice that one of the slopes leaving from the top of the mountain doesn't seem very steep. I mosey my way down a little and survive, so I tell Tiff to come join me. She obliges, and we slowly wend our way down the mountainside. 

I get to where the slope turns a little steeper, stop via some miracle of the Lord's doing, and turn around to see Tiffany getting back up after a crash. I wait for her to catch up to me, and then we figure we might as well see how far down we can go.  

Check out that form.

I keep going until that old familiar feeling of losing control of the skis comes upon me, and then, rather than immediately bailing, I try to turn out of it, which only succeeds in getting my skis crossing themselves like a priest and tossing me a couple yards down the mountain. I look up to check Tiffany's progress, and she's bailed after somehow putting herself in a situation where her only other option was crashing into some netting.

We gather up our things once again and make the noble attempt to continue our descent. After getting to a point where the slope becomes just stupidly too steep for the fifth ski run of my life, I crash again. Tiffany soon follows, and I work my way over to her. We discuss our situation.

In over our heads and down on our asses.

We've managed to stick ourselves into a pretty rough predicament where we're too far down the slope to go back up and the rest of the trail is far too difficult for skiers of our caliber. I decide to walk until I can get to a part of the slope I think I can ski, and Tiffany resolves to butt-ski her way down. Thousands of skiers pass, each whispering clearly in my general direction: "Shoobie."

We work our way down the mountain, with me making another failed attempt at skiing, until we finally get to what we thought was the end of the slope but is really just where the slope gets steep enough for a team of douchebag children to rub their skiing abilities in our faces and practice slalom runs. During this part of the journey, I join Amanda in butt-skiing, which actually turns out to be extremely practical.
Fun fact for the kids at home: Friction on the ass apparently reverses the polarity of one's general pelvic area, causing the right testicle to become magnetically attracted to the bellybutton. 

Recap Ratio:
Times Brent's Skis Have Moved : Times Brent's Been on His Ass = 13 : 11

The sun has started going down. We're cold, wet, tired. But the ski lift has entered into sight. The kids finish skiing, and one of their fathers takes Tiff down the rest of the mountain on his snowmobile while I walk the rest of the way. At the bottom, we talk to these magical skiing children, and they actually aren't douchebags at all, much to my disappointment. They're just goofy kids who ski every day and were amazed to meet some Americans. Also, one of their mothers brought a fluffy-ass dog. Pricks. 

Since the ski lift we've arrived at actually won't take us where we need to go, the father with the snowmobile takes us back up to the summit, with me riding in the backseat and Tiffany riding in the basket on the front like a freezing E.T.

Although I guess he does look a little chilly here.

When we get back to the top of the mountain, we walk over to a ski lift and try to hop on it. Naturally, because I'm involved in the story, the door has been locked a mere seconds earlier. We look across at another ski lift and watch as the operator shuts it off and leaves his booth. We run over to him and beg him to turn it back on, but apparently that isn't under his jurisdiction, so he takes us over to the administrative cabin to see what he can do for us. He comes back out and tells us to wait where we are until 5 PM. That's 20 minutes from now, but still better than nothing. 

So there we are, Brent and Tiff, standing on the top of an Alp as the sun goes down and the world turns dark, contemplating building an igloo for our survival. A little after 5, we see the headlights of a magnificently large vehicle roll up, and the angel descended in earthly form as the driver of this divine chariot tells us to hop in. 

The driver takes us on his evening round down the mountain in this vehicle, which I had hoped would be called a "snowzoni" or a "zamsnowni," but seems to be actually dubbed a "snowcat" or "trail groomer."

Would never have guessed he was a Decepticon. You really can't trust anything these days.

It takes us as far as it can, which is the bottom of the ski lift that takes you to the beginner's slope, so we still have another gondola to take to get to the bottom of the mountain.

We try to enter the doors for that one, but they're shockingly locked too. The people who operate it are still there, so we have to go to them and beg for their kindness and mercy. Not having much of either kindness or mercy to spare, one of them decides that being an absolute cockbag to us is the best solution to everyone's problems. He tells us we can't go down the lift because it closed at 5 PM. Seeing as we're 20 minutes late, it's already been shut off. We ask him if we're supposed to just walk down the mountain; he informs us that that isn't a possibility because it will take 4 hours. We seem to have reached an impasse. 

Eventually, however, the guys decide to let us in and turn the lift back on, at great cost and sacrifice to themselves. Oh, wait, no it wasn't; they had to ride it down too. Something about getting home, I think I heard. The dialect's a little rough on the ears. 

Anyways, following this exchange that consisted mostly of a man showing off his powers of mind-reading by saying the exact words we wanted to hear least at any given moment, Tiff and I climb into our gondola, take it down, and meet Blaine and Pip in the bar at the base of the mountain. Scarred and scared, we had, if nothing else, survived. 

Some life lessons taken from the day's events:
Things that are hard to do on skis:

• Stand
• Walk
• Ski
• Remain healthy

Things that are easy to do on skis:

• Fall violently