Yep, there I was at Alta this past Sunday, taking my first warmup run on
the Sugarloaf lift at 9:20. My skiing partner (Jim) was futzing with
his boots at the top and I waited for him at the bottom of the Sugar
Bowl where it turns into Devil's Elbow. Looking up the hill, you won't
believe what I saw coming towards me: a guy who looked to be in his
mid 50's, about 50 pounds overweight with a blue-ribbon beer belly,
black snow bibs with a lavender *cotton* sweatshirt, and some kind of
IPOD device who was TAI-CHI SKIING!!! I damn near fell over laughing.

I watched him ski by, arms flailing, skis spinning, on down the hill.
First, I had to wait for Jim because this was too good not to share.
Unfortunately, he took awhile to appear and by that time hunglong's
desciple was clear out of sight. But I figured we could catch him if we
skied a little on the fast side. So, I quickly explained to Jim that
there was Tai-Chi skiing to be seen and that we had to hurry to catch
him. Of course, Jim had never ever heard of Tai-Chi skiing in his 40+
years on the slopes. I decided that there wasn't any point in explaining
it when he could just observe it for himself, so I just said "follow me"

We didn't catch him, but we did manage to get on the lift about 4 chairs
behind him. "Watch the guy in the lavender. You'll be amazed." The
next run we skied right behind him making slow turns and cracking up all
the way. It was all I could do to keep from falling over or wetting
myself. Then I noticed that he wasn't alone - there was a woman who
appeared to be his daughter doing the same sthick. Subsequent chair
rides were great entertainment, as we quickly got out of synch with Mr.
Flatboarder and could observe him from the chair. The other people on
the chair would go "WTF?" and I'd calmly explain all about hunglong,
flatboarding and Tai-Chi skiing. They'd always ask "What's the point?",
and I'd just mutter something about a partitioned mind.



So, two observations:

1) One of the drawbacks of skiing at Alta is the lack of entertainment
provided by the snowscrapers. This more than made up for it.

2) This Tai-Chi skiing thing appears to actually be real. I wasn't
quite sure until now, thinking it might be some elaborate hoax. Now
I've seen it in person, up close. It's real.

Anybody else at Alta over the weekend see it?

//Walt