I hate friends. I know that sounds not only quite harsh but sort of contradictory. It's still true, though. You never feel peer pressure if you don’t have any peers. You never feel split and torn between a personal pursuit or desire and the love and companionship of your friends, if you don’t have friends. But then again I guess you'd probably get lonely. Ok, fine, I don't hate them. Sometimes I just get pissed off with them. Frustrated with how much I like them, enough to seemingly coerce me to action.
“With friends like you, who needs friends?”
I do, unquestionablly, love to snowboard. This love blossoms each winter and as a result, I purchase a season pass to a local Ski resort. The last two years it has been the Canyons in Park City. It’s been the cheapest, easily accessible, and for the most part “THE” place for college students to go. I've been pleased for the most part, though somewhat discouraged at the quality of the snow. But I have managed to have friends to ride with. I had a squad of friends from my floor in the dorms two years ago, and last year a crew from my apartment complex, we call ourselves “The Ninjas.” We even made a snowboarding video. I had a lot of fun.
“Because this is a very big idea, my friends. We're talking about a non-exclusive egalitarian brotherhood where community status and more importantly age have no bearing whatsoever.”
When everyone had come back from summer, I guess I felt like everyone was distant, sort of branching out into new facets of life. We were growing apart. And with that peoples drive to go snowboarding and ride as a crew seemed to diminish as well. Some people were considering not getting a pass at all, others suggested they would probably only go a half dozen times. And with that I felt like the vision of team unity I had looked forward to. began to dwindle and so my ties with the team began to decay. We're not talking complete decomposition, just some mild decay, like that sensitive spot above that molar on the upper right side of your mouth. Nothing was said, school started and everything moved on moderately. In fact, like an early forming cavity, I'm not sure I even noticed it.
F_ck what you know. You need to forget about what you know, that's your problem. Forget about what you think you know about life, about friendship, and especially about you and me.”
In my research and excitement for the new season I looked into some reports of equally cheap season passes at Snowbird. I looked into it and decided that it wasn’t sufficiently worth it to me. However I did find that for nearly the same price I could get a season pass to Brighton. Now I have only been to Brighton maybe 5 or 6 times. And I loved it each time. Brighton, statistically speaking is great, it has a higher average snow fall, higher elevation, more difficult runs, and best of all, offers night skiing. Actually, going to Brighton had been brought up before, but that was when it was thought to cost at least $500. But now it had a competing price tag. Now, I had a dilemma.
“You're gonna listen to me? To something I said? Hasn't it become abundantly clear during the tenure of our friendship that I don't know shit?”
Well one of the Ninjas is a rep for canyons. That means he sells passes for them in the pre-season and in exchange for his services, he gets a free pass to the Canyons. He did it last year and he’s doing it again this year. Well his response to the decision of where the “Ninjas” were getting season passes was basically “I'm going to the Canyons, but if you guys aren’t going then I probably won't go.” Another teammate then stated that “if I do get a pass its gonna be at Canyons.” So like the first of a line of dominoes, the Ninjas began to sign off on going to Brighton for the season. Everyone that is except for me. Why, you may ask. Well, I guess I hate feeling coerced or manipulated. I like to think that I make all my decisions based solely on my own preferences, snubbing my nose and giving the middle finger to the expectations of others. I had been researching and developing reasoning for why we should go to Brighton this year, I had done such a good job that I had even convinced myself. Quite thoroughly in fact. Only to find out that no amount of research or reasoning would change a simple fact: the Ninjas were going to ride at the Canyons in Park City.
“Master's my friend!”
“You don't have any friends, nobody likes you!”
“I'm not listening, I'm not listening.”
So basically I was left with an ultimatum of sorts. Like a car packed with your friends off for some fun after the high school basketball game, with the car door open, asking “You coming?” And then being frozen at that moment in time for the better part of a week. Yeah you can think of dozens of reasons why you want to go with them and yet a few dozen why you want to go do something else. But is my choosing to not go with my friends...unfriendly. What kind of damage does that do? And if I go and never get a season pass to Brighton, what kind of effect will that have? And why is it that I am the one standing outside the car being asked if I in, or if I want to come along, instead of the one driving the car to the social (or perhaps antisocial) event of my choosing?
“I want to make sure that you and I are best friends - "gnome" matter what.”
“Ethan, that's a troll.”
“'Gnome' it's not.”
Basically, I don't know what’s more important to me: the quality of the resort or the quality of the crew. Colin has pledged his alliance, and so I know no matter where I go, he and I will have an awesome time. I want to ride together and have fun together...snowboarding. And perhaps the thing that concerns me is that the excitement around this season pass issue is more about friendship than snowboarding. I thought I had it figured out, but now I've got to figure out, am I getting a season pass with friends to go snowboarding or am I getting a season pass to go snowboarding with friends.
“It’s time to ask yourself what you believe.”
...I guess I better “choose wisely.”
“Say goodbye to your two best friends, and I don't mean your pals in the Winnebago.”
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