Autumn in New York

October 25, 2021 by Don Pattison

Before I left for New York City, I was making affairs tidy in my old haunts of Portland and Hood River, Oregon and I bought groceries at the SE Portland, Hawthorne district, Fred Meyer store. When I lived in the neighborhood, for a few decades, I shopped there. A big gal, with farm girl hair and dress, held up a sign at the entrance that said “homeless please help”, as I walked by she asked “have you seen my sister, she’s my twin”? I replied “yes but it’s been about twenty years”. She gave me a cross-eyed scowl.

I was walking up New York’s 8th Ave from Penn station, about a week later, and I jaywalked the corner from 8th to West 39th and a crazy-eyed, reefer-smoking panhandler caught my gaze and stopped his rap for a split minute and said “nice hat” about my ski patrol ball cap and I said “you want it” and he said “no, suits you”. The exchange didn’t throw him off balance, nor I. Weird finds me, I guess. And as a buddy says “don’t let the dog know you’re scared and you’ll be alright”. Good to remember anywhere you travel.

My partner is in New York to make her art but also loves the court game of pickleball. I’m here because NYC post-pandemic, in the autumn, seems like a worthy adventure and I wanted to see an old buddy from thirty years ago. The morning after I arrived we took the C line, on the masked-up subway, to Central Park and she played scrappy pickle ball with the locals. I didn’t have shoes or an inclination to play but I liked the scene. People, mostly older people like me, of different races and accents just playing their best and having somewhere to be without a mask on.

Zabar's, the famous upper west side deli was my reward for watching pickleball. The nova loxs and bagels were right up there with the best of my life. Our boutique hotel was in mid-town and there are authentic and delicious delis, cafes, bars, groceries, diners and restaurants in Hell’s Kitchen. Most joints aren’t new at the task and they do it well. The global pandemic hit these shops hard but most adapted and showed New York attitude and bounce with their curbside shanties. Pocatello, ID has a lot to learn from a tidy, 9th ave, pizza joint.

It was an afternoon walk later to the Whitney Museum, and the Jasper Johns show, and we swerved through the sketchy sidewalk crowd down to the High Line walkway. Pizza was necessary for energy and the NY style will keep you satisfied on a day hike.

I’m the only guy in a cowboy, in respect for Billy Kid.

A Season in the Boat

August 17, 2021 by Don Pattison

Relocation to Steamboat Springs, Colorado wasn’t my idea. The plan came with duress and threats of abandonment. All joking aside, I couldn’t of had a better winter. I was uprooted from a comfortable life in another ski town, Bend, Oregon, but my partner’s family commitment to a ski jumping nephew was a chaperone job with a ski pass and a reasonable reason for leaving. Plus, Bend had become a California suburb, and was testing my patience and Oregon roots. As the rock and roll sage Joe Walsh said “Rocky Mountain way is better than way we had”.

I applied for a courtesy ski patrol position at Steamboat Resort and, to my amazement, was hired. Although I’ve spent a lifetime at ski hills, teaching alpine, nordic and telemark skiing, loading lifts, plowing snow, pouring beer and making burgers, sweeping floors, shoveling roofs and selling tickets, I’ve never ski patrolled. My father was a ski patroller. We had to get up every weekend morning in the dark, eat some oatmeal, clammer into the Jeep and park it in the plowed lot. It was a short, rope tow hill. It was still dark, in that Jeep and the stiff, leather ski boots were hard to get on my wool-shod feet. The nylon laces were even harder to entwine. But ski I did and who knew I’d be loading wrecked skiers and riders at my over-ripened age. But here I be and I was determined to make the best of it. I mean guys moved into the Yampa Valley to mine coal in Northwestern Colorado, 150 years ago, and some do today, so exactly how bad could my plight be?

My strength with the Steamboat Ski Patrol can be defined just as well, by the things I didn’t do: I didn’t roll a snow machine, lose an auger drill or my radio, call a guest an asshole or get injured on the job. Any of these missteps could have impacted my performance review. My supervisor is a good ‘ol boy, from Alabama, and is skilled at safety and entertainment. The patrol director could be a Zen Buddhist, but he is a longtime Steamboat mainstay having seen it all and, I’m guessing, done most of it too.

I can’t believe a father would trust me with his son’s well-being but he had to fetch the skis and poles and I was a safe bet. The little skier didn’t wake up because a tired skier boy is a good boy. But when you have this black and red suit on, people trust you and you help them out of a jam. Old concept, and it still works.

John “Pink” Floyd jumping the flaming toboggan, off the 100m hill, for the abbreviated Covid Winter Carnival.

The historic winter festival in Steamboat was dampened by the COVID-19 restrictions but one of my patrol supervisors did the jump with a flaming toboggan for a sized-down Winter Fest. The infamous firework display went skyward, without an audience at the base area but was entertaining from our perch across the valley.

From left Me, Otto Tschudi and Billy Kidd

I’m standing in the gondola employee line when a guy behind me asked “can we join you”? I said “that’s fine” as I looked at his name tag. It read Billy Kidd. So I rode the Gondy, not only with the Steamboat director of skiing, Olympic silver medalist and World Cup winner but also Otto Tschudi, the Norwegian amateur, collegiate and pro alpine ace and successful businessman. Both men were boyhood ski racing idols for me. We talked about the day Karl Schranz cheated at the 1968 Olympic slalom and other questions I had from childhood. They were gentlemen of the first order. I made a lap down Rudi’s Run with them and those fellas still make a smooth turn.

The skiing history in Steamboat, is like and unlike the skiing story in any Colorado mountain town. By like, I mean it is a town that supports a modern Colorado resort, with hotels and restaurants, similar to Aspen, Telluride or Vail. But unlike those towns, which were established after World War II, Steamboat Springs’ ski history goes back to the turn of the century. Howelsen Hill is the state's oldest continuously operating ski area, since 1915, and is a training ground for alpine, nordic and jumping competitions today.

Carl Howelsen jumping on Howelsen Hill, 1915

Max Nye jumping on the 100 meter jump on Howelsen Hill last winter

He's dead, sir.

April 10, 2021 by Don Pattison

The three kids skied up to me and started shouting. I was trying to keep a weather eye on the uphill skiers and snowboarders and the cat track, jumping delinquents. But the one kid, in the stickered helmet, was loud and said “sir, we saw this dude fall and now he looks like he’s dead”. But his buddy with a pastel helmet said “no, Kyle, he got up and said his arm hurt”. I’m reaching for my radio mic and calling in the 10-50 (accident) on the good word of a couple of 10 year olds. But they were right, it was a grab and go for this dude. Soon, I was unpacking the toboggan as my med patroller called in the vitals. Another day dragging wrecks off the Boat.

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The Restock

October 14, 2020 by Don Pattison

Bend Totes

April 24, 2020 by Don Pattison

Coming soon, on a new website, the introduction of Whitney Nye’s artful and functional tote bags. Original art on sturdy canvas. American, local, durable. Stay tuned.

Bend Oregon v. Steamboat Springs Colorado

September 14, 2019 by Don Pattison

I’m taking a little vacation in Steamboat Springs, CO away from my home of Bend, OR and it’s a surprising parallel universe, the more I think about it. Maybe there are many western towns like these two…Boise, Reno, Truckee, Taos, Leavenworth, etc. My friends and I have conspired to compiled a list of similar features and dissimilar, as we wander around.

SHARED FEATURES

River running through it with inner tube rentals and trout fishing

Ski resort and nordic center near town

Plenty of drinking establishments

Pot dispensaries

Inflated real estate prices

Cowboy heritage with a big rodeo mid-summer

Waterfall trail tourist attraction (Bend=Tumalo Creek, Steamboat=Fish Creek)

Good bakery (Bend’s Sparrow bakery ocean rolls are the winners)

Downhill, lift assisted biking

Mountain, e, and cruiser bike rentals

Lakes nearby for boating and stand up paddling

Hippie grocery store that has gone more mainstream in recent years

Music festivals, seemingly, every weekend all summer

Drunk tourist making noise when bars close

Pickleball courts and culture with plenty of retired competitors

UNSHARED FEATURES

Food cart pods (Bend)

Ski jumping hill in town (Steamboat)

Costco (Bend)

Better barber shops (Bend) Although we have a 50/50 split on that because my nephew got a good one

100 year old western wear store (Steamboat) Although Portland Outdoor Store is deeper in terms of hats and boots

Alpine slide and long mountain coaster (Steamboat)

The Owhyee 50 Years Later

April 29, 2019 by Don Pattison

I floated the lower Owhyee river in Oregon’s SE corner this spring and although I’ve run it over the years, this Spring was roughly 50 years after I canoed from Leslie Gulch to dam in 1968. The turmoil of Vietnam, Woodstock and the rest of a significant year was a long way away from Boy Scout Troop 382, from Hood River, Oregon on that voyage. Flash floods, rattlesnakes and headwinds were our main concern.

1968

East of the mountains, in an ancient lake bed, a river snakes restlessly.

River bank red mud paints my white feet.

The hammering thunderhead rain has ceased and the tangy wind of sagebrush is bitter and sweet.

We fish for crappies and bass and tye the unlucky ones off the stern of the dented, aluminum, boy scout canoe. We fried them up for dinner on a small fire of juniper.

The troop slept in flannel-lined sleeping bags under the canoes with a star-filled sky sliced out the side. Our dad’s built elaborate, plastic longhouses.

After breakfast, with a northern breeze kicking-up, we sailed the canoes using a sheet of plastic between two sticks. One guy steers, the other fishes and trims sail. Vietnam surplus ranger hats for head shade but sunburt knees in the cuttoff jeans.

Afternoon of wetness and fear in an electrical storm, trikles of brown water followed by a four foot wall of it. Somebody yells “run for it” and we do.

My brother scrambles up a cutback as a gully washer rages below. Sitting in the safety, panting wide-eyed. Break into an old miners cabin and cook oatmeal with raisins for dinner.

We dry our sleeping bags on sagebrush in the hot morning sun.

One of the scouts killed a rattlesnake, outside of camp, with a rusty shovel blade. Six rattles for the effort and danger.

Swatted mosquito and worst in Vale and the bird-watching station Malheur refuge.

Hot blacktop, dun humpy hills, the Boardman flat back down the Columbia. Scoutmaster Ned got a ticket for speeding.

The Snowman

March 03, 2019 by Don Pattison

The Snow Man

By Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Three Sisters Wilderness, Skier: Guy Giffin

Welcome to Hokkiado Japan

March 14, 2018 by Don Pattison

I've put off going to Japan but then I pulled it off. I've traveled for good and poor skiing my adolescent and adult life. Japan was on the bottom half of my ski travel list, honestly. I thought it would be Tokyo traffic and hard snow, like those couple of Olympics. Trustworthy friends have traveled to Hokkiado for powder skiing and told me stories and showed me worthy pictures. When my buddy, Vermont Johnny, called last summer with an invitation, I put him off but didn't turn him down. Turns out a Japan ski trip is about a needed respite and spiritual renewal of Zen cold powder face shots, soaking in the peaceful, but gender segregated, onsens hot springs, challenged by delicious food and drinking ice cold Sapporro Classic tall boys.

The vertical climbing isn’t long and the snow is light enough that it doesn’t concern a skiers thoughts much. But it is kind of weird to skin up what amounts to a steep orchard. But it’s worth it…the drops back to a creek are delicious. Like a mouthful of nigari sushi that you just shoot the morsel onto your tongue, like the guy behind the bar suggests.

Can’t read that sign, but was a good joint

I think an open mind and wide skis will help any Japanese skiing experience.