As I lay on the couch staring out of the bay window the other day, I noticed that something was missing. There was void, the mountain outside of my house-Mount Olympus-was missing. I moved myself off the couch (a rather difficult thing for me to do, I might add) and surveyed the conditons through the window, there was nothing. I turned the light on outside and a beautiful blanket of snow covered my balconey. Huge flakes were falling in blankets, blocking out Mount Olympus.

In a welcomed panic, I amassed my boots, googles, gloves, waxed my board, made sure all the hardware was tight and ready to go, made some calls and tried my best to go to bed by reading some T.P.S. report from work. These reports usually send me into a catatonic state, however all I could think about was riding fresh snow in the a.m. Finally, the T.P.S. report took it's toll on me, and I drifted off.

The next morning, I awoke to my wife in the shower. As I got out of bed, I felt lightheaded and my throat was killing me. Thank god for Dr. Phil, as I rapidly diagnosed myself with the flu. What the hell?! This cannot be happening now. I weighed my choices: stay at home, relax, rest and get some vitamin C or go to the hill, shred pow and most likely feel horrible for an even longer period of time.

Wisely, I choose to chuck all my gear in my car and drive to my local hill, The Canyons. As I entered onto the highway i was greeted with some of the worst grid lock traffic I have seen in my nine years here in SLC.

An illuminated banner above the highway flashed information about a sixty minute delay up Parlay's Summit. No worries, I thought to myself, I'll just return all the calls on my voice mail that I never get around to doing and call up TimAZ to see if he wants to ride.

Three years later, we started to move. I was able to shift from first gear to second gear and so on, until I finally made it to 70mph. Life was good and I found myself pulling onto Canyons Drive and heading past the lower lot all the way up to the area where a privelaged few get to park. For some reason-a mistake most likely-The Canyons sent my wife and I parking passes that enable us to park in an area where "the Mr. Block", as well as Wall Street tycons of the week sling their G wagons, S6 wagoons and S600's... like I said, The Canyons clearly made a mistake in sending us passes for this lot, but I do thank them.

Having grabbed all my gear I make way to the gondola, where I am greeted and my snowboard is gently removed from my arms and placed in the rack of the gondola. I feel like I need a break with all this exercise, I hope their is a massage therapist up top-a pretty one with big boobs. And then reality hits me with a 'ssshhhh'-the gondola's doors open. I see a tall person. Could it be my big-boobed massage therapist? Hell no! It's a 6'2, lanky red headed stepchild. This is who we call TimAZ-the selfish jerk who ruined my dream of getting the flu rubbed out of me.

A quick slap of five was exchanged followed by me having to listen to TimAz whine about something or other (most likely me being late). I told TimAZ that I needed a warm-up run, as this was day number two for me. Before I knew it, we were getting off the Saddle Back lift and riding down un-tracked snow. The snow was so light and fluffy and just below the knee. This was a great way to begin the season, I thought to myself.

Just as I was getting in my rhythm, TimAZ suggested pulling over to the side of the piste and building a little chump bump into an Aspen grove. I was all for it, as I wanted to get some pictures of the day. While TimAZ packed in his jump ramp, I went below the landing and hid behind a tree, so that if he flailed, he would not run into me and ruin my Derek Zoolander visage. I was now safe, tree-forted behind a thick Aspen. TimAZ yelled out that he was dropping and like the total pro photog, I scrambled to turn the camera on. Fortunatly, I hit the sequence button allowing me to capture some of TimAZ's Method.

After landing his trock, I could tell something was wrong, TimAZ was turning into a different person. I checked my camera to see if I got the shot. Yep, sure enough TimAz had turned into Brad Pitt. Crazy, I know. Good thing I got the picture to prove it you all, though.

Now Brad Pitt wants to checkout 9990. I was ready to go and ride some fresh, so we descended through fields of un-touched snow. Where was everyone? Oh, they must be up the road at Park (rat) City hitting rails-silly me for not thinking.

Tim and I rallied down Slide Winder and came across mounds of 'death ice/snow' from snow makers that were working overtime. TimAZ launched an ollie over a rope-a "rollie"... yeah, anyways, TimAZ is a very bad person for ollieing a rope. We all know this is bad idea. I tried to document the evidence, so that I could promptly report him to the proper authorities, but I missed the shot. I will later find out that i am very good at "missing the shot".

We pulled up to 99(90), jumped on the chair and this is what we saw:

After getting off the chair we looked out over Dutch's Draw (White Pine Canyon). We liked what we were looking at, but only an idiot would go out there with the snow pack the way it is. Take a gander:

Stoked on the higher elevation snow levels we rode down getting facials. Who knew snowboarding was so dirty? For such a well mannered person, TimAZ displays his dirt bag side in this picture:

As we were making our way off the hill, TimAZ spotted a dead tree. Being an emo-type, TimAZ thought it would be nice to give the tree a nice burial.

We made our way back to the base of the mountain, said our goodbyes and parted ways. TimAZ went to work, and I proceeded to my V.I.P. parking lot.

I noticed my truck was nestled between an S600 Mercedes and a Range Rover. As I was loading my board into the back of my car I heard a man screaming and yelling. I looked over into the Mercedes, there was fat man...a very fat, red man screaming at nothing. I hope he had a wireless phone on speaker, cause it was weird looking, and I cannot have people like that in my parking lot.