It usually goes without saying that, "A bad day snowboarding is better than a good day at work"; but in this case I am not to sure about that.

A few weeks ago I came down with the 24-Hour Snowboarding bug and had to ditch work. I went with my buddy Vaughnster up to Mt. Baldy because we had won some tickets at Ski Dazzle, like we normally do (that's another story).

So we get up there and ride the rickety lift up to the top of the hill. What I mean by rickety is that the chairs are made of wood, with some of the wood being broken. The liftees are all toothless tweekers from Fontucky (allegedly) and the ticket booth is a wood shack that doubles as a meth-lab in the evenings (again, allegedly). By the time we get to the top I have repented of all my sins in anticipation that I might not survive the lift ride up.

We get to the top and we go in to phone our wives and call in sick to work, you know, the usual. We stick our boards outside the lodge and go in to use the public phones because our cell phones don't get reception there (of course).

We walk over to the bleach blond girl in a tank top (who is crying for some reason) at the gear shop, which consists of Zinka, circa 1993, some chapstick, K-Mart Brand snow gloves and some batteries (probably for use in the methamphetamine production process that goes down on the premises) and get change for the pay phone. After using the tin-can phone we begin to walk out to snowboard.

No sooner are we about to leave the building than these 2 guys come in and yell, "Someone's board just blew off the mountain"! Well of course it was mine...and of course it was before I got one run in. And just like that $500 worth of gear, gone.

So Vaughn and I spend the next 2-3 hours hiking the steep precipice that absconded away with my board, to no avail.

I would go into more detail about the search for my board, but it just pains me too much still.

There is a happy ending however. I bought a new board. The Omatic Wig-Out 161! Rated as one of Transworld's 2008 Good Wood. A $400 board I snagged for $150!


The moral of my story is NEVER go boarding at Mount Baldy! EVER!!! NOT EVEN FOR FREE!