While traveling during the My Two Cents tour in March, I drove north to Silverton, Colorado, and the route took me past what is now known as Durango Mountain Resort. In 1990, however, it was called Ski Purgatory, and in early January, that’s exactly what some friends and I did. As I put this together in my thoughts, I wanted to find and post a photo Scott Andersen shot of me on the mountain during that 1990 trip.

It turns out that Scott had the negative, and the print he made for me was at the very bottom of a yellow Kodak Ektamatic paper box, so it actually took a couple of days to find.

I also dug around in my journal and found some salient notes about the trip.

[stextbox id=”grey” caption=”Scott, Writing in My Journal, January 3, 1990″]Ski. Ski. Soar like a bird with wings. Up slowly, then down like an eagle stalking its prey. Swiftly, with tears of joy. Smiles in abundance.[/stextbox]

[stextbox id=”download” caption=”Wednesday, January 3, 1990″]Volunteering for the night shift drive, I ended up battling a snowy, vacant road [U. S. 84 and U. S. 160] for hundreds of miles. We finally, and reasonably on time, arrived in Durango, Colorado, and checked in early.[/stextbox]

What the journal inexplicably fails to mention is that just prior to our departure from Scott’s apartment in Midwest City, Oklahoma, he fed three-bean soup to me, Robert, and Scott’s girlfriend Lisa. By the New Mexico State Line, Scott’s Ford Escort was a tiny box of hyperdense flatulence. It was so cold that we tried to resist rolling down the windows, but ended up in a purgatory of crushing cold and/or poison fumes.

[stextbox id=”download” caption=”Thursday, January 4, 1990″]

Skiing was good… uh… Scott just spoke up…

“Don’t forget to mention me, Richard.”

“I don’t care how much I eat tonight. Doesn’t matter,” Scott noted.

Exhausted, we sat in front of the fireplace.

[/stextbox]

Other items that I recall but did not write in my journal:

• Robert decided to try snowboarding, which he accomplished only marginally.
• We saw a B-52 being refueled by a KC-135.
• After a ski run, Scott knelt down to fix his boot, hiding his face, and a woman, seeing Scott’s fashionably long hair, mistook him for a woman.
• On the drive home, the New Mexico sky was so clear that we saw 15 jet contrails at once.

[stextbox id=”download” caption=”Sunday, January 7, 1990″]When we pulled into Midwest City, the elapsed timer read 99:47, so the trip is now officially known as 100 Hours of Fun.[/stextbox]