We continued on our second day of snowboarding with a nice dusting of fresh powder. So many calories were burned that by lunch I craved french fries with a vengeance–salt tends to be the taste of choice in high altitude. This was the day that Josh made the shocking discovery: He had put my bindings on backwards. This explained the weird knee pain I had experienced the previous day–as well as my general discomfort. With the bindings corrected I marveled over the incredible response time I was getting from my board. I also noticed I had not put a stomp pad on my new board which explained why I continued to almost biff it everytime I exited the lift. Everyone on the mountain was in a cheery mood–and the place was packed.

We went bar hopping in The Village that evening and somehow adopted an injured local. We accidentally took his table at a really excellent local bar we’d discovered. He asked us to join him and that’s when we noticed his bandaged up left finger and blood stained hands. “Jay” told us that he had sailed right off a cliff completely unprepared and tumbled down sharp jagged rocks to a shattering finish. He sliced open his finger from base to tip resulting in thirty-two stitches. “I could see tendons and tissue oozing out and then there was my bone,” He described, nauseatingly. “I also broke a few ribs…and I think I cracked my collar bone.” Jay carefully lifted his shirt to reveal several ribs protruding from his back at an odd angle. This was when we slowly realized that Jay was delirious and seriously messed up.

“Why aren’t you in the hospital? Doesn’t Canada have an amazing healthcare system?” I asked. Jay explained he was from New Foundland and health care goes by province…but we were skeptical. When we asked what he did for a living he said, “Oh, I don’t work.” We got the feeling he was flying really low under the radar. Every few minutes he seemed to lightly black out, or put his face in his hands, or pause to wince in pain. “Dude, can we do anything for you?” We asked. “Oh, that’s ok,” Jay said nonchalantly, “I’m going to medicate myself with a lot of beer and a lot of this…”and with little fanfare Jay pulled out an ENORMOUS ziploc bag filled with weed. Josh and I played it cool but our friend Ruben exclaimed, “Jesus! That’s the most weed I’ve ever seen in my life!” I made the connection: Jay was like so many locals we knew in Colorado making his living off drug dealing in order to live the snowboard lifestyle. He slipped his bag into the cargo pocket of his pants and we plied him with beer from our pitcher.

We were really glad to hang out with a local–even a damaged one–because it gave us a little more street cred in the bar. Jay very nicely bought Jill and I a pair of shots and inquired about where we were from. When Josh and I revealed we grew up outside of Portland, Jay raved, “I’ve heard Portland is really great…like Vancouver BC.” We agreed that if Seattle and Vancouver BC had a baby it would be Portland. At one point we had Jay laughing so hard he winced in pain and had to put his head between his legs for a full two minutes to keep conscious. “It’s been a rough week, I had my wisdom teeth removed six days ago,” Jay revealed. Josh and I were going to chime in about how much it hurt us to have our wisdom teeth removed when Jay continued: “My wisdom teeth grew straight down and ended up shattering all my back molars. They got infected and I woke up with this huge egg shaped lump on the side of head right by my ear. I live in the middle of nowhere and I had my roommate drive me all over the place to try and find a dentist who would help me. Finally this lady opened her clinic at 5am so she could operate on my mouth. She had to drain the lump and she showed me what came out: fluorescent green goo that smelled super bad. The dentist said if the lump had ruptured it would have infected my brain and I would have died. She had to remove all my back molars because the pressure of my wisdom teeth had shattered them…look.” He opened his mouth and sure enough he was missing a significant amount of teeth. He was also missing his front tooth–which may have happened that day due to his accident but we didn’t want to bring it up.

I turned to Jay, looked him in the eye, and confessed, “You are the most bad-ass person I’ve ever met.” Jay shrugged it off and then our huge nacho plate arrived. It was so big we asked Jay to hold up his gigantic bag of weed up for a comparison. We snapped a priceless shot of the marijuana bag plopped next to the nacho platter, (I’m sure you’ll understand why I’m not posting the incriminating pic). Jay kept wandering away and coming back to our little table. We decided to move on and Jay reccommended The Amsterdam, another local place with ‘the prettiest waitresses around.’ We all ended up on the patio of The Amsterdam under a heat lamp. The chairs were damp from snow, and Jay nobly donated his neck gater for someone to sit on. Josh used it to wipe down the wet chairs and we all sat down.
The plastic menu was covered with slutty pictures of the waitresses. Jay pointed at one and said, “She was voted most beautiful girl in Whistler last year.” As soon as she showed up we all crowed, “Is that you on the menu? You’re famous!” She shrugged: “I’m on a menu.” We ordered specials and noticed our little buddy was growing quiet. “I’m just really angry right now,” Jay confessed. “I can’t believe I jacked myself up so bad.” He wandered away from the table and when he returned he appeared more sullen. He pulled out a huge wad of cash–something like 200 bucks–and counted it slowly at the table. “I’m going to get a cab…I can’t wait for the bus,” He rose painfully from the table and we shook hands with him and wished him well. Josh said, “wait, don’t forget your turtle fur.” Jay picked up the neck gater and threw it over the side of the patio, “I don’t need it, the thing is covered with my blood anyway…practically soaked it.” (Josh tried not to wince, the memory of him carefully using the bloodied turtle fur to wipe down the chairs). We watched Jay cross the square and then lurk around in the shadows for a few minutes. He was obviously making a few side deals to further fund his cab ride to the next town over.

The night was deflated without our wounded local friend, but we continued to bar hop. I realized that I ate nothing that evening but nachos, french fries, and buffalo wings. I vowed to make up for it the following day with salad and fruit. Exhausted, we turned in at eleven to prepare for another day of hitting the slopes.