People Don't Change

An old friend I knew when I was just a wee little paddler on the Payette was passing through Kalispell a couple weeks ago. For confidentiality purposes, he'll remain nameless, but let's just call him "Bachelor of the Year" for fun (BY for short). I thought I'd give him a call and try to catch up with him. After our first attempt at meeting up was thwarted because of his flight being delayed and a second attempt failed because I was sick (and BY was hungover), our third attempt was a success and we decided to meet at Big Mountain to ski. We knew it was going to be brief because I had to drive over from Libby after making rounds on my patients in the hospital and he was flying out in the afternoon. I figured it was worth the drive for a couple of reasons: 1) I hadn't skied Big Mountain yet and wanted to find out what it was all about, and 2) because I had a crush on him when we were younger and I sort of kind of maybe had a little crush on him again and wanted to either a) see him again to crush on him some more, or b) see him in order to get rid of this silly crush.

Here's how it went down:

• Emily arrives to the parking lot of Big Mountain around 11am, buys her $66 lift ticket, calls BY on her phone.
• BY doesn't pick up. Emily figures he's making a run and she leaves a quick message letting him know she's waiting at the bottom the bottom of the lift.
• BY calls back, says he's actually in the lift line and sees her.
• Emily looks up and sees BY in a yellow helmet, bright orange puffy coat, and baggy teal ski pants. She closes her phone.
• BY to Emily: "Hey, get in line and meet me at the top!"
• Emily to BY: "Cool, sounds good. See you up there." Emily is 4 chairs from the top and sees BY speeding down the trail with his phone to his ear. Emily's phone, buried deep in the pocket of her ski bibs rings. The people on the chair with Emily look annoyed that a phone is ruining their wilderness experience. Emily unloads at the top and digs through her layers to find her phone with one new voicemail and one new text. The text is from BY and reads: "Meet me at the bottom." Emily thinks that was weird, but whatever, so she goes down the trail she just saw BY going down.
• Emily gets to the bottom and her phone rings again. More digging through layers of clothing. It's BY.
  
• BY to Emily over phone: "Hey, get in line and meet me at the top, I'm just loading on the chair."
  
• Emily to BY over phone: "Um...okaaayy."
• At the top, BY is actually waiting. Emily unloads and skates through the crowds over to him. Emily and BY "buddy hug" (you know what I'm talking about...one of those side hugs where you are standing parallel). They quickly exchange greetings, "Hey, good to see you, glad you made it, blah, blah."
• BY to Emily: "Are you fast?"
• Emily to BY, caught a little off guard by the question: "Well, probably not as fast as you...but Aaron thinks I'm fast." Emily is being modest; she's pretty fast and she knows it.
• BY to Emily: "Good, 'cause my Boys are already headed to the top of the run, and there's a little uphill, so you gotta point 'em." BY takes off. Emily "points 'em" and makes it up the incline just a few feet short of where BY made it. BY intermittently turns around to see if Emily is still on the bump trail that leads to the top of the run where BY's Boys are waiting.
• BY to his Boys: "Hey everyone, this is Emily. She's a friend from back in the day."
• Boys size up Emily.
• Emily feels small, but since she's a medical student, she's gotten used to the feeling of being small and doesn't let it get to her. "Whatever," she tells herself.
• BY and his Boys take off down more little bump trails which open up in the trees at the run. They are fast. Faster than Emily. Emily is holding her ground, though. At the bottom of the first pitch, BY and his Boys stop, look uphill to Emily, and wait.
• Emily to self: "Shit (actually, she may have used a stronger expletive here...one a little closer to 'fudge', but she won't use it now to spare her grandmothers). They're seeing if I'm good enough." Emily is on teles. BY and his Boys are not. Emily can't keep up with them if she does tele turns, but she's pretty good at faking an alpine turn on her tele gear, so she says to herself, "Screw it...it's either keep up with them doing an alpine turn, or get left in the dust making pretty tele turns." Emily rips some tight turns through the trees and steep pitch with 12+ inches of new snow.
  
• Emily stops where BY and his Boys have been sizing her up. She can almost see their point cards go up. One of BY's boys says to group: "Well, looks like we have a solid crew." Emily interprets this to mean she can keep skiing with them. She thinks she scored about a 7 (apparently medical school is not the only place where 70% is a passing grade).
• More fast skiing, which might be "sick", is had to the bottom of the run.
• BY, Emily, and one of his Boys, hop on the chair together; Emily's in the middle. There's some small talk, awkward silences, but mostly just BY and his Boy talking right through Emily. Emily, once again, feels a little small.
• Another run. BY and his Boys are no where to be seen at the bottom this time. One of his Boys skis up and introduces himself, wants to know where everyone is.
  
• Boy to Emily: "They wouldn't have gone up already, would they?"
• Emily to Boy: "Well, I wouldn't doubt it." Just then, Emily's phone rings. It's BY (not a shocker).
  
• BY to Emily: "Hey, I'm sorry I'm not at the lift line. I have to meet my dad because I have to get home, you know, I've got to pack and catch my plane. Sorry, it was so crazy, but it was good to see you. Feel free to ski more without me, though."
• Emily to BY: "Oh, okay. Yeah. It was good to see you too.(?) Have a safe trip home."

And just as quickly as the crushing had started a few days earlier, it was gone (thank goodness!). Emily did feel free to ski without BY. In fact, she met some very nice guys from Whitefish who saw her staring at a trail map, pinned her as an out-of-towner, and showed her all their secret stashes on Big Mountain for the rest of the day. They even talked to her on the chair!

I'm glad I went and this bachelorette has, yet again, learned some "very valuable lessons":
1) Big Mountain is a big mountain with some amazing terrain that locals don't mind showing to a lonely girl
2) crushes are silly and only fun for a day or so
3) people don't change