I was going to ski – we would have called it snow ski! – for the first time in my life. Wolf Creek Pass in the San Juan mountains in Colorado. We’d be catching a bus from Oklahoma, driving there and staying at the lodge. Jim Patterson was taking me on a host-Dad and Son special treat. It was 1973, and in the previous summer he and Katie had taken friend Dottie Moffett and I on a steam train ride nearby – the Durango to Silverton narrow gauge railroad.

My pic of the Animas River out the train window:

That was a glorious summer. But now we were going in winter:

As the day approached we watched the snow reports with bated breath. Nothing. No snow. The day before we were to leave the bad news came: Trip cancelled.

True to form Jim looked on the bright side – he always did! – and invited me to join him in drowning our sorrows as he opened up the big heb cooler full of Coors beer he had packed for the trip! Jim always put a good spin on everything!

I would have to wait fifteen years till 1988 before my first snow skiing – in Austria.

~~~oo0oo~~~

Also, another new sport I had started but wouldn’t really get into for another nine years, took place on the Colorado rivers next to that railway line: White-water kayaking:

~~~oo0oo~~~