Good to be back in the Butte

Speaking of town, sounds like things got a little weird. I heard we, and by we I mean you, paid more money than before to have road bikers flash through town in August? You realize when I’m out there doing my thing, whatever it is I do, and I mention Crested Butte, the discussion topics go like this in order of popularity: Legal weed. Free weed. (It’s easy to get confused.) Cold. Steep skiing. Crestitude. PBR. Mountain biking. Where? (Yes, there are still people who have not heard of Crested Butte.) Telemark skiing. (Yes, there are still people who telemark ski.) A bunch of other things. Mine on Red Lady. Legal weed, again. But never, not once, does the topic of road biking come up. Oh wait, I forgot… Bud Light comes up also. Well played. You guys are desperate for cash and exposure. I’ve been desperate for cash and exposed myself too. Hardest five bucks I ever made. Good thing that was before the Internet. At any rate, it’s been a while and it was time to come back, reconnect and get ready for the reason why I first came here and why I will always return: The community. Just kidding. It’s the skiing, stupid. I loves me some skiing. What has one and a half thumbs (noodling accident), rips 25-degree pow and speaks French? Moi. Before I go there, here’s what I’ve been doing. According to my buddy Than, there have been some inquiries over the past couple of years as to what I’ve been up to so I thought I would dispel any and all rumors. Let’s see… It’s been a while and folks, let me tell you, things got strange. If you’ll recall, I spent some time wandering the deserts and shacking up with members of the FLDS Church smoking duct tape and lighting off non-dairy creamer bombs in the desert while searching for gemstones and falling into a tremendous prescription pill habit after helping Rush Limbaugh out on a vision quest. Dark times for sure. But I escaped and I returned to get a reading on my physical make-up at the Western State College (as it was known at the time) HAPLab. The numbers were a bit depressing, to tell you the truth, so I hit the road once again in an effort to “find myself,” or return to my former self or just do something with myself. I think it’s called the Id? Or in my case, the Id-iot. As therapists will tell you, or in my case the Internet tells me, there are five stages of loss and grief. Stage One is denial and isolation. With that in mind, the machines at the HAPLab were wrong and I headed south. Isolated myself among the South People, like Deep South People. The swamp honkeys. It was there that I discovered noodling. Now noodling means something else where I grew up, for example, “I took Betty to the point Friday night for some noodling.” So when I heard about people in the south noodling fish, I was both disgusted and intrigued. I mean, I know parts of the south are known for weird when it comes to copulating, but fish? Fortunately, my concern for the southern culture was soon laid to rest when I discovered that “noodling” was nothing more than ramming your hand into a hole in a muddy bank and yanking out a gigantic catfish. Seems legit. Met a girl, too. We had some things in common, actually just two. Noodling and well… let’s just say she’s a woman and I am a man, or rather, mannish. Nuff said.