Our annual ski trip always followed the most hectic time of the year – exam season. Come mid-January, campus would be a-riot with frantic, sleep-deprived students, recently reminded that although they pretended otherwise, grades in college DO count for something and course averages could be made or broken on the back of one exam. Generally the more conscientious students – to be distinguished ultimately from the mass of anxious, uncaring or utterly perplexed among us – would have wisely used “reading period” to its euphemistic purpose. Others would count on hoarded (or enhanced) adrenaline rushes or what they believed to be innate intelligence to see them safely across turbulent waters.
Libraries were home to the wretched, bored, and socially-deprived alike, and the cold was braved at every hour by Cantabrigians seeking academic inspiration or another change of scene. From the moment exams began the most salient emotions in the air were the relief of those already through the gauntlet and the jealousy of those who waited in purgatory, wishing time truly would take its toll swiftly and painlessly. As the two-week session dragged on students found more and more creative methods of sabotaging themselves and their futures in reaction to the stress and high drama of testing. Parties, late night pizza runs, fast food binges and an exponential increase in local caffeine intake combined to create a uniquely humorous but ultimately tragic scene.
But as with all things exams too came and went, passing with barely an echo of reminder save the collective exhaustion of overworked graduate students, co-eds and tenure-seeking lecturers alike. In the post-exam anticlimax one could feel the relief, subtle and underwhelming, that follows catharsis of this nature, and all returned to the normalcy of chores and the restrictions of the weather and the relative desperation that takes boredom for granted.
So in an attempt to postpone the ennui of scholasticism a small (but ever growing) group of my friends would set off on an epic adventure to an exotic destination: Vermont.
Last Call
Our journey would begin in the Quad, as five or ten highly organized undergraduates would coordinate food, housing and transport for the cluelessly useless remainder of us. We’d set off on a Friday morning, bags of fleece-lined apparel in tow, scarves, gloves and hats piled on to save room for beer and other necessary provisions in the belly of our busses and vans. About two hours outside of Boston we stopped at perhaps the most important marker along the way – the New Hampshire Beverage King. Apparently the staunch Puritanism that dictated so much of Massachusetts’ founding was stopped dead in its tracks at the border of this freedom-loving state where you’re more likely to get prosecuted for hunting without a license than driving without one. While a select few would cart our pooled money to the King, we who had entrusted them with the all-important task of buying booze for the week would bee-line for Wendy’s for our first ski trip meal. Few could predict that after only a week even the most health-conscious of us would be trading salads for chili bowls, but at this state the illusion of propriety and purpose hovered our lighter selections.
After filling our bellies and that of our cars we’d set out for our final destination – Smuggler’s Notch. As we approached this appropriately named nek in the mountain, a couple of things happened which combined to produce tension bubbling on turmoil: one, we proceeded to stop at sundry liquor stores along the way with recipes for cocktails and sisaters in hand; two, the amount of snow on the ground accumulated and the rapidly growing darkness slowed our movement, such that the combination of possession with intent and frustration from achieving that intent immediately meant that by the time we arrived at our cabins we were more than ready to party.
Inevitably supper on the first night was of the liquid persuasion, and without fail the raging release of fifty newly-arrived friends with nothing of the horizon but more of the same meant that no one got off easy. And the hardcore among us (and here I include myself) also understood that we could party anywhere, but that the reason we left Cambridge wasn’t the booze but the slopes...
… and the chili bowls. From that point forward, day in and day out as the week progressed, the pattern continued. 8am on the slopes. 11:30 break for lunch, where we’d either take the financial hit and buy big or play the part of the struggling student and subsist off of “complimentary” Saltines and packets of ketchup. Either way, by 1pm we were back on the slopes, only stopping to head home by 4. On a good day, we’d get upwards of fifteen runs in – a number that dwindled as the ratio of sleep and booze consumption crept in the latter direction. Suffice it to say that by the end of the week no eye was un-blurred, no liver unscathed, no brain un-pummeled by fun and friendship. No mad idea went untested, no drinking game un-played, no toes unbitten by frost and snow.
No Punking Out
The final day was inevitably the hardest. What once fit neatly into an overnight back naturally would not resume its previous status and was not to be contained once more. Snow-stained boots and ever-damp leggings were crammed next to items reeking of sweat and liquor and substances unknown. Perhaps the most unconventional item of housekeeping was the disposal of the cans – thousands of them. Some were crushed, some hidden, some left wounded in the field of battle. Calculations were put on hold in the face of the sheer enormity of beer we drank. Mad thoughts of recouping all deposits on future beers consumed in the year to come, thereby financing ski trips of tomorrow, filled our eyes with visions of heaping containers of Genny Light and PBR.
‘Twas never to be. But we did manage to fund a return trip to Wendy’s where, as I previously mentioned, stomachs stripped of their lining and consciences of their food-driven guilt hit the dollar menu for all it was worth. And then off we rode into the early gray sunset to face yet another semester of toil and tripe, with nothing but the fond memories of smooth slopes and good company – and the hope of more to come – to sustain us.
