long awaited story-time

Okay, so not so much long awaited as long promised. Not this past weekend, but the weekend before that, my brother came up from LA to take me out snow tubing for the weekend. I'm not a drinker nor am I the "wild and crazy stripper" kind of guy, so when the idea of doing something for a bachelor party came up, I was pretty short on suggestions. Ry, however, came up with some really great ideas, the winner of which ended up being a weekend trip to go snow tubing outside of Tahoe.

The plan was this: drive up and snow tube all day Saturday. Saturday night head back. Sunday watch the Eagles playoff game while eating hoagies. A great plan and one I was really looking forward to.

When we headed up to Soda Springs, we found the place pretty crowded. Lines were long. Lift lines were longer. But there was snow and lots of it. And I hadn't seen that much snow in years, so it was nice to be back in the cold white.

While snow tubing was a lot of fun, by far the biggest source of entertainment of the day were the hundreds of kids there who had never been in snow before. So many of them just ... didn't get it. It was hysterical. Here's my list of top five favorite snow-retarded kids:

5. The Eater - this kid just would not stop eating the snow. No matter what kind of snow it was, into his mouth it went. Fresh white snow? In. Old stepped on snow? In. Old snow-mobile run over snow? In. If that kid had had a fistful of yellow snow, it wouldn't have lasted long.

4. The Fish Out of Water - This poor girl ... her parents apparently didn't really explain to her that snow is cold. Really cold. Colder than, you know, rain or sunlight. So, when she got up there, she took her glove off, grabbed a big fistful of snow and instantly just began to cry. Not only that but she didn't quite get that if she just wiped off her hand and put her glove back on that everything would be fine.

3. The Lazy Girl - This girl was sitting in the snow digging at it with some piece of blue plastic. I couldn't figure out what it was at first. It looked like salad tongs. But, instead of the typical salad tong ends, it had two concave cups on either end. She was scooping up snow wads with it, then she'd beat the thing on the ground a bit, and then scoop up some more snow. Finally, it dawned on me that what she had was a snowball maker. I kid you not. Who the eff needs to use a snowball maker to make snowballs? Other than being fairly round, it tends to make some pretty crappy snowballs, too. They disintegrate easily and don't look like they hurt when you're hit with them. What's a snowball if it doesn't leave a welt?

2. The Girl With Vision - Most of the kids there were doing a pretty piss poor job making "snowmen." I put that in quotes because most of these things resembled little more than tiny snowball stacks. Lumpy wads of half-assed fun with a stray stick protruding from one side, that sort of thing. Generally, Ry and I just figured that these kids were never going to see a real snowman. That was until Ry and I saw the Girl With Vision. It was like watching the first caveman invent the wheel. You knew you were watching something revolutionary. As we were standing in line, she walked by on a mission with a HUGE snowball in her arms. We laughed and joked about someone finally having had "vision." About half an hour later, she walked by again. This time she'd recruited a friend and the two of them were pulling a sled brimming with huge snow balls. Forget the invention of the wheel, this project of hers had just taken on the look of the construction of Giza's pyramids. As we were leaving later in the day, we passed by her handy work: a massive snow fort constructed out of huge snow bricks and seemingly impenetrable to the piss-poor snowballs of the girl with the salad tongs. This girl was our hero.

1. The Lazy Boy - This kid took the cake, though. After mocking Lazy Girl amongst ourselves for a little while, we forgot about her and started to just talk about other things. About half an hour later or so, Lazy Boy comes walking down along the line of people waiting for the snow tube lift. He looked so forlorn and needy. Why? What was his problem? He kept asking everyone "Does anyone have a snowball maker?" Ry and I lost it. I was dying to scream "USE YOUR HANDS, DIPSHIT!!" but his mom was standing in line right in front of us. That, and ... you know, I would never actually yell something like that at someone. But I wanted to. That kid was a retard.

Anyway, that was the snow and it was fun. Hoagies and the Eagles win were also fun. But nothing beat the impassioned pleas for a snowball maker.