February 8th, 2004
Snow and the blizzard
I went to Nagano over the weekend for a ski trip with some of my friends from Sony. My friend Kaz, whom I met at IWEC two years ago when I first came to Japan. Fate seems to have generated a role for him to carry my incapacitated self home from every evening event we attend together, but fortunately that service was unneeded this time as I went to sleep at eight Saturday night from a very uncomfortable collision-induced headache.
The first time I ever went skiing was at Alta, while visiting the University of Utah after being accepted into their graphics program. That time, much like this one, I was in the company of people whose skills and yearning for interesting challenges far exceeded my own, and as a result I ended up with a number of very high-speed crashes and an unconfirmed concussion. I spent the following three days with a crippling headache and a bottle of aspirin.
However, this time around involved injury to a considerably lesser degree, and I managed to not only regain the beginnings of skill I generated three years ago, but also attain a decent grasp on the basics well enough to be able to enjoy myself. I ate a lot, skied a lot, slept a lot, and had two baths. Not bad for a hundred-eighty bucks.
I also took some nice pictures which no doubt stand on their own without Photoshop. It’s almost completely empty though as the majesty and scale of the view makes it possible for any tourist with a Polaroid to produce dentist-office quality landscapes. To me that’s probably the best metric for the value of a photograph, the ability to pull uncommon emotions out of pictures in unique ways. We’ve been so saturated with inspirational posters and Thomas Kinkade that we’ve forgotten what art is.
The special significance of this trip is that marks the last weekend that I don’t have to go in to the office until further notice.
