A couple years ago, I fell in love in Jay Peak. An otherwise cold, windy and miserable day would also prove to be one of my best. There is something to be said about visiting places that were the setting for important moments of your life. Since November 22nd was set to be opening day at Jay, and due to the personal significance of the resort, I decided to get a car load of bros to go down there and ride.
The unusual suspects of the bro-down in Jay.The road trip started out early, I picked up Yeti and Brad, and with Yahoo! directions in hand, we proceeded east for what we hoped would be a good day of riding (first for Brad and Yeti, second for me). The drive was mostly uneventful up until the Canada-USA border where we got pulled aside by the customs agent. He asked us if we were carrying more than $10,000 in cash (I wish we had that much scratch). I guess he wanted to search our stuff to make sure we weren't secretly part of the wealthy elite.
Normally a customs search would be no big deal, however, in this instance Brad really needed to use the restroom. So he asked the customs agent "do you guys have a public washroom in here?" To which the agent replied "It makes no sense for us to have public restrooms here because if you were smuggling drugs you could go flush them, or if we say something you don't like you can smear the whole place in poo." (no joke, he said that). Of course that's when we realized that Brad had probably set off a red flag with his request. Fortunately it didn't take long for them to search the car and they didn't make a huge mess of it. Once we were out of visible range of the border, we had to pull over to the side of the road so Brad could take care of business.
Yeti meets his doppleganger. What are the odds of seeing two of the same gaper.With our urinal emergency behind us, we continued on toward Jay. However, we ended up taking a wrong turn (we turned up VT-105 instead of VT-242). Once that feeling of being in the wrong place set in, we decided we should pull over and ask someone for directions. Fortunately there was a pedestrian up the way. Yeti started joking how it was probably hillbilly with a shotgun. As we approached, we realized that this guy did in fact have a rifle slung over his shoulder. Not to be deterred, however, we stopped and asked him for quick directions. He confirmed that we had in fact taken a wrong turn and kindly directed us on how to get back. We thanked him and made our way. When we finally arrived at Jay, we were stoked to realize that it was snowing pretty heavily.
No sooner had we started unpacking did the gaper hunt begin. The first victim: Yeti. He decided to rock a purple one piece but because he does it in typical Yeti style, it had a certain panache that couldn't be ignored. However, Brad had been instructed before he left to make sure to spray a gaper wearing skier, so he looked at Yeti and said "expect to be sprayed."
Although Yeti's was the first, it certainly wasn't the last gaper we saw. In fact no sooner had we gotten our lift passes did we notice another skier wearing the exact same gaper. An instant friendship was forged.
For our first run of the day, we decided to go with the more difficult of the runs that were available to us. The snow was good but the moguls were large and the visibility basically nil. Which is probably why we hadn't noticed that we had ventured onto one of the closed sections of the run. This is when I fell in the creek (I seem to do this at least once a year). None the worse for wear, I tried to make my way back to the lift except I found the going to be tough (Yeti and Brad were already way ahead of me). That's when I realize that I have about 2 inches of sluch caked onto my base. I finally cleaned it off so we could resume our riding.
Gene Kelly sings in the rain but Yeti and Brad sing in the snow. The Jay clouds strike on opening day.We spent the rest of the morning shredding up any run that was open until our legs were sore and our finger tips frozen. We decided to head inside for a while to warm up our fingers and take a bio-break. This is when things almost went south. While going to the restroom, Yeti's iPhone fell out of his pocket. He realized it was missing and we spent the next 15 minutes or so re-tracing his steps trying to find it. After asking pretty much everyone in the lodge if they had seen it, and only seconds before Yeti lost it and started throwing tables around, he realized that it had fallen into the hood of his gaper. Crisis averted.
The rest of the afternoon was a lot more of what we experienced in the morning: snow, lots of riding, some freshies, some gapers, more snow, and lots of laughs (did I mention it was snowing). At one point, while marveling at the heavy snowfall, we came upon a guy sitting in the snow, seemingly trying to fasten up his bindings. What was significant was that he was complaining that he wanted to go back to Delaware. I said "But there's no snow in Delaware!" "Exactly" he said which made me wonder what he was doing in Jay in the first place.
Finally when it was time to call it a day, we packed up all of our gear and made our way back toward the border. Four hours or so and 63 litres of fuel later, we made it back to Canada's capital craving massages and sleep. We were thankful to have benefited from the mystical Jay clouds for a truly epic opening day in Jay and to have averted any potential buzz-kill worthy crisis. I was happy to have gone back to a really important junction place of my life. The day was truly epic but at the same time made me realize how much I missed those who could not be there.
