Thursday, February 6, 2014
Vincent is a New England skier. He is grateful for those rare days when he can't hear his skis underfoot.
The gray days of amusement park anticipation pass through another season.
Time To Make The Skis Go Fast: The VinSki Speed Sauna was like a European Speed Spa for Skis.
Limp Flags and Straight Smoke In The Morning Promise A Great Day of Skiing: Vin and Jim Go Skiing At Loon, February, 25, 2013-from Ipswich, MA to Lincoln, NH and back.
Wet Leave Freshies: Out Of Bounds Backcountry, Ski Bradford, Haverhill, Massachusetts
Vincent
was skeptical at first. As desperate as he was to ski, the idea of
skiing on dead leaves seemed ludicrous. Then fate delivered a gift that
would forever transform New England Spring skiing for Vincent. Vincent
just happened to pass by a table-full of grizzled, duct-tape festooned,
straight-ski, old-timers putting on their well-worn and scuffed
rear-entry Salomon boots before first chair. They spoke wide-eyed to
each other in furtive, hushed tones as they buckled deliberately and
rapidly. Vincent had heard occasional talk of this cadre of die-hard,
Yankee skiers who had mastered skiing in piles of leaves, but had
dismissed the group's existence as just another urban myth created by
desperate New England skiers who had no place to ski after the Spring
thaw had done in what little was left this season-even at Tuckerman.
Jackson Hole had its "Air Force," but a secret group of New England
skiers who skied the deep piles of leaves each Spring? No way, it was too wacky to fathom, even for Vincent's fertile imagination.
...to be continued.
Vincent was assigned on Saturday night to work the terrain park lift, Evvy's Double Nickel. On his walk over to the chair, Vincent commenced to chew things over in his head. His first thoughts were linear, pedestrian and safe: It's 5:30pm now, I work until 10pm. It's 28º. Press the green button to start the lift. The Partek triple chair, installed in 2003, has a capacity of 1,800 passengers an hour and top ends at 400 feet a minute. Then, things got interesting. His thoughts began to humanize a bit. Evvy's Double Nickel...Vincent wondered just who this Evvy was. Perhaps she was a lifelong Bradford skier, or an instructor or a Patroller, who just loved this side of the hill. Perhaps she was someone's beloved. Perhaps she was someone's grandmother. Was she still alive? Or was the chairlift simply commemorating her life well-lived? She seemed to be revered at Ski Bradford. After all, she was the only person to have two things named after her--the gentle tree run above the chair was called, Evvy's Glades.
Vincent thought of a stroll he had once made through a cemetery. Such tranquility. Seeing all the headstones. Reading the inscriptions. Imagining the vicissitudes of each individual life. Meditating on mortality. And now, just this. It really put things into perspective.
Vincent thought it ironic that the hill on which Ski Bradford stands is called Dead Hill. Actually, Vincent found a lot of life there. He just had to smile. Thank you, Evvy.
About Partek Ski Lifts:
Partek Ski Lifts was a small aerial lift company founded by Hagen Schulz in 1996, the son of Gary Schulz, who was the founder and owner of Borvig Ski Lifts. When Borvig closed in 1993, Hagen Schulz was quick to act and started his own ski lift company.
Using a lot of Borvig's lift designs, Hagen was able to sell two chairlifts his first year to Jiminy Peak, MA and Shawnee, PA. In 2004, Partek decided that it wanted to enter into the high-speed detachable lift market. It's unclear on how far Partek got in its design process for its detachable lift before Doppelmayr CTEC purchased the company January 22, 2005. Along with the purchase of Partek, Doppelmayr CTEC also purchased all of Borvig's lift patents too. Hagen Schulz now works for Doppelmayr CTEC as a sales consultant and runs Ski Lift Parts Inc.
Schulz said of the deal, "It was becoming economically challenging to manufacture and sell new lifts without a complete product line which would have included developing a detachable grip lift. The cost to develop a detachable product would have imposed a significant financial risk to Partek when the ski lift market has little opportunity for growth. The high cost of liability insurance made doing business producing new lifts additionally prohibitive."
During its time as a lift manufacture, Partek was able to install 24 lifts in North America, with its last one being installed at Willard Mountain, NY in the summer of 2005.
Thanks to SkiLifts.org
It may not be the Glacier de la Noir in Chamonix or Mahogany in Haines, Alaska, but Roger's Chute offers daring Bradford two-plankers all the challenge they'll ever need to put their skiing mettle to the test--all under the leering, sometimes jeering eyes of the Hornet Chair riders above. Please, "french fries," only. No "maka' da' pizza" here. Think KT-22 at Squaw.
STOP IT!
Another bluebird moment.
Under the Shadow of the Bullwheel
Under the shadow of the bullwheel,
turns the earth into the night
Under the shadow of the bullwheel,
moves life with adamant might
Under the shadow of the bullwheel,
one skier smoothly alights
A bullwheel is a large wheel on which a rope turns, such as in a chairlift. In that application, the bullwheel that is attached to the prime mover is called the drive bullwheel, with the other known as the return bullwheel.
Originally, bullwheel was an oil field term applied to the large wheel that turns the drum upon which the drilling line is wound in percussion drilling.
The bullwheel (or bull wheel) began
use in farm implements with the reaper. The term was commonly used to
describe the traveling wheel, traction wheel, drive wheel, or harvester
wheel. The bullwheel powered all the moving parts of these farm machines
including the reciprocating knives, reel, rake, and self binder. The
bull wheel's outer surface provided traction against the ground and
turned when the draft animals or tractor pulled the implement forward.
Cyrus McCormick used the bullwheel to power his 1834 reaper and up until the early 1920s when smallinternal combustion engine gasoline engines like the Cushman Motor began to be favored.
Vincent vaguely remembered the morning routine of selecting a tie for work. Regimental, club or foulard? And which knot to tie? Four-in-hand? Pratt? Half-Windsor? Windsor? Prince Albert? Atlantic?* Those were the ties that bind. Vincent took a sizable draft of the cold morning air into his lungs as his chair moved inexorably to his point of departure. Vincent was glad to be free today.
In the Ambassador ready room at Ski Bradford, Hansi is regarded with a reverence normally reserved for demigods and saints.
* Apologies to T.S. Eliot
Vincent was as perplexed as everyone else. Whenever he donned his Ski Bradford-issued blue, black and grey ski jacket of an ambassador, Vincent felt the overwhelming urge to speak in Austrian German, one of a number of Upper German dialects. Words such as, "Wunderbar!", "schnell" and "sauerbraten" began to roll of his tongue with ease much to the astonishment of his peers as well as the paying skiing public. Vincent yelled down from his ascending perch, "BEND ZE' KNEES!, BEND ZE' KNEES!," to startled skiers beneath him and then broke into rousing and raucous renditions of Austrian ski songs of victory. There was just something about the uniform that seemed to possess him. Vincent asked for much help and constrained his exuberance for all things Austrian the best he could.
tran-si-tion noun
the process or a period of changing from one state or condition to another
Chair # 34 climbed slowly and steadily above the packed granular. Vincent observed the lines in the snow left by skiers. Some were jagged, and messy, reminding him of the poor penmanship of the hapless few, himself included, in Miss Getty's fourth grade class. Others showed signs of skidding at the top of the turn, washouts caused by getting in the backseat. However, a select few were glistening, serpentine declarations of sublime awareness, surety and presence. Two simple, sharp lines cut so perfectly in the white crystalline canvas that they reflected the brilliance of the noontime sun in a continuum that seemed to have no beginning and no end. "The transition is what it's all about," Vincent mused. All he could do was smile.
It was Vincent's first night alone on top of the Wasp Chair. Fear, doubt and insecurity crept in. "What if somebody fell off? What if he failed to hit the red stop button in time and some skier was needlessly bludgeoned? What if he fell asleep? What if he really, really had to go? Vincent became aware of his breathing and returned to the moment.
Vincent also recalled the rejoinder of Anne Lamott's dad in Bird By Bird: "When, years ago, her ten-year-old brother was panicking, unable to write a report on birds for which he'd been preparing for months, their father calmed him with the advice 'Just take it bird by bird.'"
Vincent worked one of the magic carpet lifts on this sunny Saturday morning. He happily helped children, many of whom were on skis for the first time, get on the gently moving lift. Vincent reveled in the shared joy of snow, sun, skiing and smiles. He was grateful for the gift and knew intuitively that this would be his favorite lift to work.
Night skiing at Ski Bradford evoked warm feelings similar to those Vincent felt 40 years ago skiing down, "Big Blue" at the Blues Hills Ski Area in Canton, Massachusetts. Joy abounds in each turn.
The low sun and the warmth it brought felt good. Vincent had read somewhere that animals, when presented with a choice, preferred warmth to food. In that moment, Vincent intuitively understood.
Carving or skidding? Rails or washouts? Athletically stacked or in the backseat? All Vincent had to do was look beneath his feet. The truth would set him free.
