Welcome to the “Lunatic Texans On Skis” Tour

I want to thank you for showing up for this press conference. It’s important that we try to set the record straight, if for no other reason than to staunch the gushing of legal fees.

Now, if you’ll permit me, I’d like to make a brief opening statement, and then I’ll take some questions. Ahem…

First, I’d like to point out the sheer hypocrisy of those who would harangue us for the minor communications glitch that occurred on the first day of our ski trip. Like, I’m sure that you’ve never driven 20 minutes up an icy mountain road to the ski lodge, unloaded all the equipment and toted it up to the locker, purchased lift tickets and then realized that your ski boots were still at the rental shop at the base of the mountain.

OK, I will admit that it was silly of us guys to believe that when the wives said that they’d loaded all the gear in the car while we were paying out, they really meant that they’d loaded all the gear in the car. It was negligent of us to fail to go through a complete inventory list before making the drive up the mountain. It was sheer hubris, brought on by a combined 60+ years of marriage, to believe that our communications skills could not fail us. In these respects, perhaps the criticisms are just the tiniest bit warranted.

But, let’s not dwell on the negative. Or, at least not that negative.

There’ve been some nasty rumors floating around about my mastery of the art of skiing. First, let me say that skiing itself is way overrated. Someone has said that it is possible to duplicate the skiing experience simply by sitting in a bathtub filled with ice cubes and lighting $20 bills one after another. Some would argue that even poker is a more legitimate sport than downhill skiing, which requires only two flat sticks and gravity, equipment that is available pretty much coast-to-coast.

Nevertheless, just because I skiied over my partner’s head doesn’t make me a bad skier, per se. And, technically, I didn’t actually ski over my partner’s head. Well, sure…I skiied over his head, but that’s different. Plus, if he’s going to do a faceplant on a narrow trail in the trees with me hot on his heels, by definition he’s sort of limited my reactive options. Truth be known, I thought I displayed admirable flexibility in parting my skis enough to pass unimpeded over his prone body (and he showed appreciated restraint in keeping his head down at one critical juncture).

So, I hope that clears that up.

Now, with regard to the totally baseless allegations coming from the Santa Fe Ski Patrol, I ask you, who are you going to believe? Some pretty-boy Bode Miller look-alike with a fancy ski parka, or yours truly? And, frankly, I think that skiing down those wide open groomed runs at full speed is for wusses. Plus, for $48 per day, you ought to be able to get your money’s worth by skiing laterally across the runs, from tree grove to tree grove.

You tell me…what’s more better: following the myriad tracks of the lemmings on the groomed runs, or making first tracks, however wobbly, through the trees spaced up to 14″ apart?

That assumes, of course, that you actually make it through those trees. That brings us to the reason I’m standing before you with an ice-pack on my right knee, which I know you’ve all been wondering about.

I want to go on record as being the first to demand a little truth in advertising from the ski basins of America. To illustrate, let me share a, um, hypothetical, which could have happened to a, um, friend. Hypothetically, if you had a ski run named, hypothetically, “Adventure Land,” and it had, hypothetically, such accoutrements such as a teepee and a little covered bridged and was generally swarming with four year olds locked in perpetual snowplow stances, well, you’d expect that such a run would be really, really safe. Wouldn’t you?

Well, that’s what they’d like you to think, the sadistic demon-spawn who design ski slopes. But the ugly, ugly truth of the matter is that there are real trees, many real and solid trees – hypothetically-speaking of course – and the impact of the tip of one’s right ski with the trunk of one of those trees such that the impacted ski stops and the other ski, along with all the hypothetical anatomical parts to which it is directly and indirectly connected continue onward at a high rate of speed could, hypothetically, lead to unnatural contortions of the non-moving part or parts. (By the way, no actual trees were harmed in the making of this hypothetical.)

This being the case, I’d like to respectfully suggest to the hypothetical Santa Fe Ski Basin that they give the aforementioned mislabeled “Adventure Land” a more appropriate and descriptive name to help prevent any future such hypothetical situations as that detailed above. I suggest something like “Screaming Trees of Painful Death” or “Orthopaedic Surgeon’s Lexus Payment.”

Well, now…I trust that this introduction has been helpful. I’ll now open the floor for questions. No hypotheticals, please.