The Best Ski Trip Ever
"Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman.."-The last journal entry of polar explorer Robert F. Scott
I don't know the exact moment that we realized the day had spun completely out of control. It might have been when the chaperone wet her pants. Maybe I should start at the beginning.
It was January 2004. I was with my brothers Jim and Jack, my cousins Phil and Paul, and a dozen or so assorted guys from our old neighborhood in Weymouth. We were on a day trip sponsored by one of the bigger ski shops. Just so I don't get permanently put on their Terror Watch List, let's call the store, oh, "Ski Markup" and say we were going to ski "Monday River."
You meet at Ski Markup, a bus drops you at the mountain where they hand you your lift ticket and pick you up at the end of the day. A good deal all around. I think the first inkling we had that this would not be your garden variety ski trip was when we were ten miles or so from Monday River, cruising through a light snowstorm and we passed another bus, exactly like ours, broken down by the side of the road. Like the scary old caretaker from every "Scooby Doo" episode, that bus was a warning sign, telling us to turn around and head back home. "There's evil ahead I tells ya. EVILLL!!!"
We should have heeded the warning because two minutes later we slid across the left lane and crashed into a snow bank, the bus coming to a stop tipped over a twelve-foot embankment. Phil then took the early lead in the Best Line of the Day competition when he said, “The amazing thing is that we managed to skid off the side of the road in Maine without hitting a washing machine.”
We piled out of the bus and as fate would have it, there was a snow tubing park right across the street. Although it looked closed (the place was empty and the lifts weren’t running) the indoor snack bar was open. The girl behind the counter, who was understandably puzzled that she now had a busload of customers at ten in the morning, told us the boss decided not to open the park but neglected to tell her. So she came to opened the snack bar, as usual. I’m pretty sure it was me that asked the obvious question: “If a snow tubing hill is closed on a snowy Sunday in January, when exactly is it open?”
Actually, we had one other question. Since we knew we’d be stuck for a while, we asked “How far is the nearest liquor store?” It was about a hundred yards up the street. Bingo. The die was cast. This day was about to take an ugly turn.
It was all coming together like a bizarre sociological experiment. What would happen if you put a handful of Weymouth guys in a parking lot, gave them unlimited access to beer, snack food, cigars and port-o-johns, and left them with nowhere to go for an entire day?
The answer was “drunken debauchery.“ The first case of beer disappeared in no time. We periodically sent out two man hunting parties to get more. Snack Bar Girl volunteered her boyfriend to drive us to the packy in his pickup. We were joined by the chaperone, “Susan” (not her real name) a pretty, 40ish Cougar-type who could out drink the1986 Celtics. She explained that she doesn’t work for Ski Markup, she just skis for free in exchange for running the trip, and she knew less about when we’d get out of there than we did.
A tow truck arrived to free the bus, but it was one of those regular sized ones, which was like asking my four year old to move a coke machine. More beer. Soon our bus driver was led away in handcuffs. (Important travel tip: clear up your out-of-state warrants before leaving home.) Jim’s friend Jay decided he came for some skiing, and ski he would. He climbed/stumbled up the snow tube hill, sat on a ski and tried to make it down. I’m being kind if I say he made it twenty feet before he came off the ski and barrel rolled the rest of the way down like Bullwinkle while we watched in amazement. More beer.
The key to survival in dire circumstances is a positive mental attitude, “esprit de corps“. We responded to the situation the best way we could: drunkenly. Eventually we formed a circle and started telling jokes. Offensive jokes, golf jokes, sexist ones, racist ones…every one of them funnier than the last. I seem to recall it was the “Oprah goes to the doctor” joke that gets the credit for making Susan admit she’d laughed so hard she peed herself. That didn’t make her any less attractive to a bunch of stranded drunks.
Our bus was finally hauled away and we got word Ski Markup was sending another. More beer. It was getting close to night fall when the new bus came and we headed home. One of the passengers asked me to talk to the store about them giving us more than just a make-up trip. He wanted to ski free or store merchandise or something for his trouble. Why me? “Because you guys are in good with them.” That was news to me. But the guy kept insisting. I think he picked me because he sensed weakness. As anyone who’s ever talked me into karaoke will tell you, I cave into pressure easily. In minutes I grabbed the mike to the PA system, screaming that I was the Rev. Jerry Jackson and I was demanding justice. “Whadda we want? Reparations! When da we want ’em? Naaah!!!” The new driver, who was dragged in on his day off, was not amused.
Eventually we made it back in one piece, probably only a few hours after we’d worn out our welcome with the rest of the passengers. Weeks later, we took our make up trip, only to be met at the bus by Susan. She wasn’t chaperoning this time, she’d seen all the Thorntons on the list and signed up. And she was carrying a letter written to Ski Markup from a woman who was on our original trip. The woman was griping about how horrible and traumatic her trip was. Mostly, it was about us. How we spent the whole day drinking (true) and using foul language in front of small children. (Not true. In fact, we didn’t even swear in front of the kid who spent the day sneak attacking us with snowballs.) She wrote about how “the drunkest and most obnoxious of them all” started screaming over the PA system and almost caused another crash. Apparently she was unaware that when I drink I become witty, sophisticated and charming.
Anyway, she CC’d the letter to the State Police and the local PD, apparently in the hope that they’d pull officers off the hunt for Al Qaeda in order to track down the bunch of Weymouth guys who tried to make the best of a bad situation. She ended the letter by saying “…then they all stumbled to their cars and drove away.” Credit Phil again for putting it all in perspective.
“We didn’t drive away when we got back. We walked over to Bertucci’s and drank some more.”