{"id":2451965,"date":"2019-12-07T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-12-07T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=317250"},"modified":"2019-12-07T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-12-07T07:00:00","slug":"tony-vagneur-just-a-left-and-a-right-and-its-all-right-in-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/tony-vagneur-just-a-left-and-a-right-and-its-all-right-in-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Tony Vagneur: Just a left and a right and it\u2019s all right in the world"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It happens most every year, particularly after a good snow: \u201cAre the lifts gonna open early?\u201d With a low, almost imperceptible murmur, talk starts to spread, kinda like the gathering of a herd of cows who serendipitously know that a gate at the far end of the pasture, over a mile away, somehow just got left open.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not immune to that kind of wishful thinking (early opening), which more often than not seems to come true, but sometimes life gets in the way, especially on weekends.<\/p>\n

With the early opening assured, there seemed little to do but wait. But wait, there were horses to get home before the snow got too deep, and with a big storm threatening, opening day became horse hauling day. Fortunately, the snow-packed road had finally melted off just enough to get the job done.<\/p>\n

Then Sunday rolled around and my daughter and son-in-law needed to get their cows home before the big storm hit, and work like that is just as fun as skiing, so no sweat. Ty and I usually trail them the first 8 or 10 miles down the lane, but being so late in the year, we figured we\u2019d better haul them all the way out.<\/p>\n

Ty and Lauren had brought them down to a natural corral the day before, so we figured we didn\u2019t need any horses to round them up \u2014 they were ready and having no horses would save us an additional trailer trip to get everyone home. We arrived early with a fleet of trucks and trailers, raring to go.<\/p>\n

Then the question arose as how to best get around a bunch of them at the bottom of a 45- to 50-degree slope. \u201cHell, that\u2019s no problem,\u201d I said, and took off with Johnny Nieslanik to the top of that incline. Me and Johnny trucked right down there until he went to the left \u2014 I figured I\u2019d better go right to even out our herding front. Made some good turns, too, going down that steep, gravelly SOB, just like running a slalom course, until a dirt snake got me and down I went.<\/p>\n

No big deal, except somehow, I pulled my left hamstring in the process. I could barely walk once I got collected, and trust me, it was a long day, especially driving a stick-shift truck for a couple of laps. Could have done the same thing on the mountain.<\/p>\n

The day after Thanksgiving, the grip of my ski boot held my leg just right and I could ski as usual, although takin\u2019 it easy was the word. I hadn\u2019t missed much, it didn\u2019t seem. As an old friend said after last week\u2019s column, \u201cDon\u2019t you wish you could have a time machine and go back for just a day?\u201d Yes, yes, I do.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the beauty of getting back on the slopes in the fall. A couple of turns down a favorite warm-up and it\u2019s all there. There\u2019s no reticence involved, just ski. It\u2019s as though summer didn\u2019t intervene \u2014 coulda been up there the day before, or 20, 30 years ago, doing the same stuff. Been down those runs hundreds (thousands) of times and it feels so good to be back home again. OK, OK, after a while, the legs are a little rusty, but other than that?<\/p>\n

Planned Monday\u2019s ski day around Klaus\u2019s 100th birthday party because you\u2019d be a damned fool to miss it, and a great guy like that deserves your support. Talk to him for 10 minutes and your own motivational level shoots up, making the world a better place.<\/p>\n

Catherine Lutz, one of my first editors at this paper, and I were talking to a young man who was telling us how he\u2019d skipped work that morning so he could ski in honor of Klaus. \u201cYou mean in honor of his birthday,\u201d someone asked? No, he didn\u2019t mean that \u2014 he meant that because of Klaus he was going skiing. Just because. Period. That\u2019s how Klaus affects people.<\/p>\n

Thursday morning, my daughter and I, along with my 2-year-old granddaughter, Charli, headed for the Magic Carpet at Elk Camp. It was a first for both Charli and me, and after a couple of runs, Charli started eyeballing the chairlift, \u201cLet\u2019s go, Ampa.\u201d Five big runs before lunch. Atta girl! She likes it.<\/p>\n

It was Charli\u2019s first day ever on skis, and don\u2019t you know, it also was her first big powder day. That should make a good story whenever she starts telling about how it was when she was a kid.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re in it for the duration now, and there\u2019s no looking back. As fellow ski patrolman Howie Mayer, namesake of Uncle Wiggly\u2019s, always said, or at least one of the \u201cfamily paper\u201d repeatable things he always said, \u201cIt\u2019s just a left and a right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tony Vagneur writes here on Saturdays and welcomes your comments at ajv@sopris.net<\/a>.<\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It happens most every year, particularly after a good snow: \u201cAre the lifts gonna open early?\u201d With a low, almost imperceptible murmur, talk starts to spread, kinda like the gathering of a herd of cows who serendipitously know that a gate at the far end of the pasture, over a mile away, somehow just got […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2451965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-19 03:30:07","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2451965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2451965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2451965\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2451965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2451965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2451965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}