Learning How to Relax

I spent a lot of time back at my old university that year.  I still had friends there, so I went to see them nearly every weekend.  No longer having any responsibilities there totally changed the experience.  I spent all of my time hanging out with people, and didn’t have to worry about doing anything.  That is many other people’s entire college experience, but I didn’t really get a taste of that until after I graduated.

Shortly after graduation, I also came to realize that I had become lactose intolerant.  I had always disliked most dairy products, but only after being extremely ill during my last week of college did it seem to have a negative effect on me.  I suspect that eating nothing but ice cream that week may have played a role in the development of that issue.  It took a few tries to confirm the seriousness of that problem, but I steer far clear of all dairy products to this day.

That winter my Dad and I went on another of our biannual ski trips.  This time we went to Utah, and my brother came with us, since he was in college by then.  I also brought Ben, my college roommate, and we met my uncle there.  We all drove, my Dad and brother from home, Ben and I from LA, and my uncle from Colorado.  We did a while week in Park City that January, right before Sundance.  It was a long week, and I was the only guy that made it out onto the slopes for all five days.  The first day, we went to a resort called Canyons, which was a great place.  We had dinner at a five star restaurant at the top of the mountain.  Now I normally don’t like “nice restaurants” because you are supposed to get all dressed up and such.  So it was pretty funny to be in this one where all of the customers are wearing ski gear.  But they had really good food, their Kobe beef chili was the best I had ever had.  (Although I am not sure if that is just a function of how hungry I was by that point.)

I am pretty sure I got a concussion on the morning of the fourth day, which was interesting.  Someone fell in front of me, and when I stopped to help them, I slipped on the same patch of ice, and landed on my back.  My ski helmet is super thick, but it still really rang my bell.  I got up and kept going after a minute, and figured I was fine.  Once we got back to the top, we were looking for a specific run, and I knew what direction it was, but when I got to the sign and stopped to wait for my Dad to catch up, that isn’t what it said.  My brain didn’t process what the sign did say, just that it didn’t say “Ox Bow,” so I kept looking around for it.  After another minute or two of waiting, I looked up at it again, and low and behold, it said “Ox Bow” now.  That woke me up pretty good, maybe I hit my head a little harder than I thought.  After that moment I could read fine, but thinking back, I realized I hadn’t been able to read anything on the signs or lift since I fell.  So we took a little break in the lodge for an early lunch, and after an hour or two I felt fine, and we proceeded to ski the rest of the day.  Our last day there, it was four below zero, which is the coldest I have ever been, and hopefully I will never need to break that record.

I also participated in a Bible study one night a week that year, with a couple other friends who had just graduated.  One of them was from NorCal, and had attended the camp I had worked at my freshman year.  As we went through our first year out in the real world, he would pray every week that I would get a chance to go back to work at Wolf Mountain, since we had previously established that it had been important in the development of my faith.  I tried to explain to him that between my job, apartment, and independent consulting clients, there was no way I was going to be able to just disappear to camp for a couple of months.  It was obviously impossible.