That first evening, when we cracked open our first beers together, I couldn't wait to present him with a special gift. "Uh, can I get you to please come here, Mr Heins?" I asked, motioning him to my trailer door. Then I somewhat awkwardly . . . handed him the tail-end.
"Oh, you shouldn't have, Mr Buntline," his eyes lit up. "They must be over 200-centimeters long."
"Just a small token of my admiration. Uh, yes, Mr Heins, 205 to be exact. Uh, be careful: they may be loaded. I considered 210, but I decided 205 might be more practical for your size."
"I know, I know: 'and never slip or slide them at anything you don't intend to ski.' . . . You gave something a lot like this to Wyatt Earp, didn't you?"
"Uh, yes, yes, I did--an extra-long-barreled Colt Revolver. . . . And, likewise, these skis are called . . . 'Buntline Specials.'"
"Oh, thank you, Mr Buntline, thank you. I'm sure someday they will come in very handy, even in this day and age when most skis seem to be getting shorter and shorter. They might be a little long to 'clear the holster easily' in tight-steep moguls, but I'm sure they'll come in handy somewhere sometime."
"Yes, maybe in a ski-down or showdown with Glenn Plake or something--you never know."
With that, he set them carefully aside, and we sat down in the lawn chairs between our two trailers. Finally, with my pen-and-tablet in hand, we got started, as I asked Mr Heins, with a tone not unlike Robert Pir-sig in his fine book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: "Okay, tell me: What on earth . . . has happened to the Ski Industry?"
Boarder Rustlers & Fun-Guiders
At the Not-OK Corral--
He winced, took a good swig, wriggled about a bit to get a more comfortable deep seat in his canvas chair, and slowly began: ". . . Well, the Money--the Greed--the same thing that has happened in most industries. Snow-Boarders have basically taken over the ski busi-ness--some call it 'The Great Turn Robbery,' but I call it 'The Great Terrain Robbery,' . . . and it never should have happened," he added, shaking his head slowly but thoroughly.
"Go on," Mr Heins, "I'm listening."
"It started like a little germ about the middle of the 1980s--about the same time the AIDS Epidemic got under way, come to think of it. There was a film released, not a Warren Miller movie, but a sort of unknown filmmaker, . . . of a lone snow-boarder dropping out of a helicopter on some huge powder-laden mountain. It only lasted about twenty minutes, this G-rated turno-flick, there was no plot, but everybody got a kick out of it--we watched all winter on-n-off in the bars and the coffee houses, and no one thought too much else about it."
"The seed was planted," I egged him on.
"Well, the next winter, at Jackson Hole, the ski area I was working at, maybe a half-dozen snow-boarders showed up and bought lift tickets. We shrugged our shoulders and thought nothing of it--that was less than two snow-boarders per month."
"No real threat," I supported.
"Well, the next winter, all of a sudden, I'd say a couple hundred showed up--we probably witnessed a couple of snow-boarders any given day all winter, still not much of a threat."
I handed Mr Heins another beer, and let him continue. He was starting to get passionate about his story. Only, I couldn't help asking him: "Uh, Mr Heins, was it like . . . Manifest Destiny?"
"You mean like the White Man taking land away from the Indians, Mr Buntline?"
"Precisely. It would seem to me that the skiers were the new Indians, and perhaps the snow itself was the new buffalo, or something like that."
"Well, Mr Buntline, I can see how you would link it that way, . . . but, no, snow-boarding was more sinister . . . than a bunch of people just looking for new land and new opportunity." He thought hard for a moment, and then continued. "No, what we didn't know at the time was . . . it was more like Invasion Of the Body Snatchers. Before we knew it, a big problem was developing, our whole ski culture was changing. . . ."
"To nose rings and Rap Music and baggy pants belted around your thighs, I presume?"
"Yeah, Mr Buntline, . . . and orange hair and nonsense like that. . . . I guess that lone snow-boarder was not wearing a rubber--isn't that how AIDS got started?--or the mountain didn't have any birth control. . . . What happened was, the big-name ski companies got a hold of the potential, and they started making the darn things . . . and marketing them; instead of an obscure snow-board maker in a little garage somewhere, the major ski manufacturers got involved with it, Rossignol, K2, and the rest, right or wrong."
"And, of course, they had to make and market all the accoutrements that go along with it."
"The biggest criminals, in my opinion, were the Clantons and McLaurys, who had a chain of ski shops all over the West. Ski Shops have always been notorious for driving up the price of ski equipment, monkeying with the technology every year, but, when the first few snow-boards came along, they figured they could create a whole new market. . . . What they did was . . . they went down into the cities and started rustling skate-boarders up from the cities . . . and branding them snow-boarders in the mountains--young innocent skate-boarders who had already found a comfortable niche as naturally as the well-surviving White-tail Deer in and around the warmer lower-lying urban areas. . . . The Clantons and McLaurys--these were guys who wouldn't be caught dead on snowboards, like drug dealers selling drugs but having sense enough not to take the drugs."
"Boarder Rustlers! You mean they don't even like snow-boarding?!" I said.
"Hell, no! In fact, they don't even live above the snow-line--they don't even like snow."
"It sounds too, Mr Heins, like they were like those smart businessmen who, at the outbreak of a Gold Rush, don't bother to go digging for the gold them-selves--they gladly supply the picks and shovels . . . at a hefty price."
"So, anyway, by about the third winter after that twenty-minute film of the lone snow-boarder, there were thousands of them, thousands of them. When Ike Clanton got his first big shipment of snow-boards from the factory, we didn't know they were snow-boards at all--the crates all said 'BEECHER'S BIBLES' stamped on them, and there were thousands of them--or maybe it was 'BURTON'S BIBLES.' You'd go to stay in a cheap motel room, and, instead of there being a Gideon's Bible on the night stand, . . . there might be a snow-board standing in the corner of the room, tempting people to use it--it's surprising what people will fall for . . . if it starts out 'free.' In my mind, snow-boarding was spread not so much like Gold Fever--skiing was already the best way for mining snow,--it was more like snow-boarding was deliberately spread . . . like smallpox, and the indigenous skiers and skate-boarders . . . had no idea of the dangers. . . . And, since the American DisAbilities Act was just getting under way, the ski areas had difficulty denying them lift privileges and--"
"Excuse me for a second, Mr Heins; but what precisely is so wrong with snow-boarding?"
"Poooh! Mr Buntline!" he stretched back in his chair. "All of a sudden, we had skiers getting hit by them, out-of-control boarders running over their ski tips and tails, and the high-percentage of broken wrists on the snow-boarders themselves. Snow-boarders had trouble getting on and off the chair-lift. --What you must realize is this, Mr Buntline: snow-boarders are one-sided; . . . when they stand on their board, they have to be facing either to the right or to the left, they can't stand looking straight ahead where they're going like a skier can. Snow-Boarding has brought about a rash of injuries and deaths the likes of which we haven't seen since the RailRoads of the late 1880s. In a nut-shell, Mr Buntline, Snow-Boarding is Dysfunctional."
"Oh, I see," I commiserated. "So it's not as innocent as . . . digging for gold . . . or wanting new land to farm. And the profiteers . . . are strictly in it for the Greed."
"No, yeah, it's more like a Drug War! with a lot of innocent young people getting hurt. . . . See, because they're locked into one stance, they can't have independent-leg action like a skier can, which makes them top-heavy and more out of control. . . . Being onesided, and having both feet locked into once stance, it's hard for them to even stand on the bunny-hill--they slowly-but-surely tip over there all the time, arms flailing, and landing too close to beginning skiers who have already a hard enough time but can at least spread their feet and skate around somewhat. . . . For a snow-boarder to even get on the chair-lift, it's an ugly awkward affair: first they have to bend over and undo one of their boot bindings, then they must scoot all twisted and contorted over to the chair with one foot still attached to the board twisted . . . and one foot hobbling around the board in the snow--they easily get tangled with other people's skis or boards, and themselves. When they unload at the top of the chair-lift, they must plant their butt in the snow again . . . or at least bend over again to reattach themselves."
"Oh, I see, Mr Heins," I nodded. "So snow-boarders are a hazard in more ways than one. Maybe, if they belong anywhere," I smiled, " . . . it should be the ski-lifts just outside of Bend, Oregon."
"Hey, that's good, Mr Buntline. . . . Yes! Not to mention the runaway boards slicing people's heads off because they don't have ski brakes. . . . But I'm getting a little ahead of myself. Let me tell you how they've taken over two-thirds to three-quarters of the ski industry in a twenty-year period."
"Of course. Good idea," I said, urging Mr Heins on. We were getting an excellent start on his most interesting story. And I could see that it would be easier than I had originally thought, as we weren't going to have to fabricate lies like I had to do in all my other dime-novels, . . . as his truth was extraordinary in and of itself.
"A big burr under my saddle is the fact that some of my fellow ski instructors jumped on the bandwagon. Seasoned ski instructors in their 20s and 30s saw a potential for moving up the career ladder. They weren't selling Amway like they thought they would, so they saw the early days of snow-boarding as a ground floor opportunity. If they found themselves having trouble advancing their career as a ski instructor, . . . suddenly they could be top-dog as a snowboard instructor--made me wanna puke. The Clantons and McLaurys bribed Turn Marshals and Turn Council members with free snow-boards. . . . Then, now that instructors were promoting it, snowboarding became even more legitimate and Politically Correct. The darn ski instructors who didn't like the idea, who stayed ski instructors, . . . found it easier to just get along, . . . to just 'go with the flow' and not rock the boat. A whole bunch of Fun-Guiders didn't care whose side they were on . . . as long as they had a job."
"Yes, Mr Heins, Fun-Guiders at the Not-OK Corral."
He sat quiet and pondered the whole disgusting scenario for a minute. I got each of us another beer during the lull--I could see how this man had a lot to drink about. . . . Then he resumed, trying to make a dialogue of his monologue, "Do you see what's happening, Mr Buntline?! What's been happening in the ski industry is what's been happening to all industries . . . all over the whole country."
"Yes, I see," I commiserated, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers. And Greed via Planned Obsolescence, Political Correctness, the Selling Out of Values--it's just like what Melvin Douglas talks about to Paul Newman's nephew in the movie HUD, how who we look up to, good or bad, . . . can change the course of the whole country."
"Yeah, Mr Buntline, so now we get more fast food--and cousin phenomena like highly dysfunctional Line Dancing, with stupid hit songs like 'Achy Breaky Heart.' . . . A big selling point," he continued, "was the fact that . . . the ski industry didn't have their own ski boots buckled on right."
"What do you mean exactly, Mr Heins? Complacency?"
"Well, not complacency exactly so much as . . . Sore Feet!"
"Sore Feet, Mr Heins? I don't quite follow."
"Yeah, Mr Buntline, millions of sore feet, . . . times two. . . . The high-dollar ski shops have always been notorious for making ski-boot fitting such a pretentious and complicated torturous fiasco affair. They always have an 'expert boot-fitter' in the back corner . . . wearing a lab coat like some girl at the mall selling eyeliner and lipstick and pedicures. And it's become the Code of the West to tell all skiers how thin their socks need to be and how tight the boots should fit. They get a local foot doctor involved to scare you into buying a pair of custom-fit 'prescription ski orthotics' for the bottoms of your feet--that's a couple hundred dollar affair that you probably don't need. . . . Then, to add insult to injury, while top-of-the-line ski boots can cost $800 retail, the ski-boot salesperson will invariably tell you: the boots 'pack-out' after about a mere thirty-five days of skiing, making them 'too sloppy for continued use' after that short time period."
"Are you kidding me?!" I couldn't help jumping in. "Ski-boots cost that much?! . . . and then they're only supposed to last only thirty-five days?!"
"Well, that's what they tell the general public, and the ski shops love it when the instructors believe it--course, the shops might have to bribe an instructor with a new pair of boots now and then to help perpetuate the greedy myth. Some ski instructors believe it simply because the next guy believes it, and they don't want to be seen as stupid . . . for not believing it--a lot of it is nothing more than Peer Pressure."
"So you don't agree with the price of the boots . . . or the fitting at all, Mr Heins?"
"Oh, Hell, No! Well, go ahead and get some boot-fitting advice, if it's free, so you can shop-n-compare.
But I buy my ski boots at pawn shops and thrift stores for $25 a pair a few years after they come out, and 'packed out,' I might add, by some other skier. . . . See, precision fit may be important for an Olympic Racer trying to be the best in the world on a given day, . . . but we're not Olympic Racers, we're ski instructors--we need to be out all day long, several days a week, and all season long, . . . keeping our feet warm and comfortable. Anyway, Killy took pride in doing his own fitting; and Stenmark's boots were seven-years-old when he was in his prime, but that was never advertised."
"So . . . it needn't be so scientific," I thought to myself out loud, somewhat relieved.
"Hell, No! It's more like tinkering with an old leather saddle, . . . or an old shot-gun, . . . and you can do it sitting by the wood-stove, talking to your bird dog--you don't need a bunch of calipers and computer programs to figure out your ski-boots."
"In fact, in your poem 'A Chair Ride Before Christmas,' you actually wear your ski boots to bed, don't you? 'And I, in my ski boots for a novel night-cap, . . . had just settled too for a long winter's nap.'"
"'When deep in a dream, there arose such a virgin, I mounted a chair-lift to satisfy my urgin'.' That's right," he smiled. "Now, as far as boot-fitting goes, you might thumb through some old Buyer's Guides, to see what models are out there, then go try them on--some brands will fit your particular feet, some brands won't; then, when you take a pair or two home, you can take the liners out and tinker with them: experiment with different wool insoles and whatnot, trade liners between outer shells--do whatever you want to make your boots snug-but-comfortable. A good boot fit simply means locking your heel down-n-back, but let your toes wiggle and breath a little--you'll know. Flex your ankle as you buckle the boot, to get your heel down-n-back, and you should buckle from the bottom up, not all at once but a little bit at a time, kind of like cinching up the saddle on your horse--play with the flex, and it should feel snug like you have air in your tires. There should be a cant adjustment, in case you need to tinker with the lateral edge-angle of the boot (but that's more a topic for my manual than here). Remember, it's the bottom of your ski where you care what's happening, not the bottom of your foot; and the bottom of your ski is affected more by the top or the boot, which is your lever to operate the ski with. The poor weekend professional with excruciating foot pain--he doesn't dare admit his $1000-worth of technology is what's causing his trouble, that would be too embarrassing, too sacriledgious, or he may not even understand what's going on, because his best friends are equally dysfunctional."
"I had no idea it was this interesting, Mr Heins."
"Yeah, no, I buy my boots cheap, and I buy them big enough to be comfortable with thick socks inside them to stay warm. . . . Oh, you need to be a little careful who you buy some ski-boots from: you don't want to buy them from some old lady at a garage sale who may have had flowers planted in them--you could get planter's warts."
"I see what you're saying," I said, nodding my head with approval. "Amazing," and then I couldn't help shaking my head, as Mr Heins vehemently continued:
"Yeah, they won't admit it, but ski boots haven't changed that much even since the 1980s. Oh, they made a big mistake the season of '79-80, when Dolomite and Nordica each came out with a ski boot that went all the way up to your knee: they blew a lot of knees out that winter, and it only took them one winter to realize their mistake."
"Yes, Mr Heins, it does seem that ski-boot height and stiffness has remained fairly constant since the 1980s. And I've heard the no-nonsense four-buckle system, rather than rear-entry, has been the tried-n-true design since then--almost like an old Model 1894 WINCHESTER Lever-Action Rifle."
"Yeah, I mean, some of the boots from the early '90s might be stiffer than you want for today's easy-turning shaped skis, but, then again, if they're 'packed-out,' or broken-in, so what? they might be just right. And I don't care if my boots are four millimeters wider than an Olympic racer's, because I prefer warm feet instead of less drag." Mr Heins paused for a moment . . . and took one last big breath, as well as another gulp of beer . . . and, almost like a combat veteran from the Chosin Reservoir in Korea, . . . reflected: ". . . We lost millions of skiers to snow-boarding . . . simply because they were sick and tired of cold hurting feet, sick and tired . . . of cold hurting feet."
"And then they saved hundreds of dollars a year, more than they pay on car insurance! Is that it?" I asked Mr Heins, "for the reasons Snow-Boarders committed the Great Terrain Robbery."
"Well, Mr Buntline, those are primarily the motives. But remember: it's not totally the snow-boarders them-selves--in many cases, the snow-boarders are pawns in a bigger game . . . that is orchestrated by the few greedy men in control who have a hidden agenda." He stopped for a moment to think hard about something. . . . "Another factor," he mumbled quietly. . . .
I waited, trying not to disturb his deep thought.
And then he resumed, "But there is one more considerable factor that I don't know if you'd call it a motive or a circumstance or what, Mr Buntline. But the issue is this: Ski Poles . . . or lack thereof. When Snow-Boarding came along, the Ski Equipment Rental Shops naturally saw a need to fill, so they started renting out snow-boards . . . and lace-up snow-board boots; what tickled the rental-shop employees pink was the fact that, with the new snow-board crowd, they did not have to mess with ski poles! 'No Ski Poles!' they rejoiced to themselves. So the rental-shop technicians became an accomplice in the proliferation of snow-boarding--they were an accomplice to the Great Turn Robbery! as well as to the Great Terrain Robbery. . . . Now, the luxury of not having to measure and hand out poles in the heat of battle . . . and then not having to put poles away at the end of a hard day--this led to them being resentful of skiers needing poles."
"Uh, Mr Heins, excuse me, but this must have been The Great Pole Shift the authorities were warning us about around the turn of the millennium?" I surmised. "And it didn't even happen in the Arctic Circles as they had predicted, but right under our noses in the Great American West."
"The little pole issue was a by-God Malcolm Glad-well Tipping Point! Mr Buntline, and no one from NASA could have seen it coming!"
"A Tipping Point. Like a virus or a Social Epi-demic--all started by one little germ, . . . and then helped along by . . . maybe just one other seemingly insignificant factor."
"Yeah! Now, a quarter to a third of the business is still skiers, BUT: most of those skiers are not skiers as we once knew them, they're merely snow-boarders with skis on their feet! A lot of today's skiers have been 'UnArmed,' if you will, stripped of their poles, Mr Buntline! You couldn't blame the instructors in a way: they got tired of wrestling with the Rental Shops--even when you do get your poles, they are often the wrong length, or they are mismatched or bent . . . or too thick for some skiers' grips. Some of the Rental Shops' tactics are pretty subtle, if they do it intentional."
"Stripped of their very right to carry 'Skier-Arms,' Mr Heins? Why, that's Arm Robbery!"
"Yeah, and then they wonder why I'm 'bi-polar.' Well, actually, I am 'tri-polar.' . . . But, to make a long story short, by robbing skiers of their poles, the nifty extension of their arms, they committed the Great Turn Robbery, since these skiers don't have the necessary basic tools for feel, timing, and balance; and they committed the Great Terrain Robbery, because now, everywhere you look, there are snow-boarders taking up space that used to be prime downhill skier habitat: snow-boarders on the bunny-hill, snow-boarders on the slopes, and snow-boarders in huge Terrain Parks that are the same exact thing as Urban Sprawl . . . up on the mountains."
"Yes, Mr Heins, I believe it was the Reno Brothers who committed the first Terrain Robbery. . . . Out in California, I think."
"Of course, there were other factors: peer pressure, political correctness--you asked about Complacency earlier, Mr Buntline. Before anyone really knew what was happening, Snow-Boarding had become Politically Correct, and Peer Pressure was rampant--I mean, how do you tell your 10-year-old boy you're not going to take him snow-boarding? especially if you're the average American father who doesn't understand skiing or snow-boarding himself."
"My goodness, Mr Heins, Complacency was a huge factor, and that's what got us on 9/11. . . . You don't suppose--naw, it couldn't be--" I was to afraid to open my mouth at my new theory, . . . so Mr Heins went ahead and said it for me:
"Yes, Mr Buntline: Al Queda and the Taliban, Muja Hudeen, Bin Laden--any one of those could have been behind the proliferation of snow-boarding."
"Ah, yes, Mr Heins, when you see snow-boarders down on their knees, No! Don't tell me they're bowing to Allah!"
"Could be, Mr Buntline. But I don't want to turn this into a Real-Edgeous War, a one-man Crusade--I just want to teach skiing . . . and not feel like I'm having to ski uphill to do it. I still think it was mostly the Clantons and McLaurys--but they blame it on something they say is in the water, claiming that snow-boarders are nothing more than mutant skate-boarders. Then there are other Conspiracy Theories, but it's probably too late to get into that now. We have been too many years now . . . in the Gilded Edge, Mr Bunt-line, . . . and there is much to sort through."
"I understand, Mr Heins. It is getting late, . . . and we are getting low on beer. Shall we resume this discussion tomorrow evening?"
"Yeah, Mr Buntline, snow-boarding's a Social Epidemic that people don't even know is a Social Epidemic."
"Tomorrow you can explain more, I'm sure."
We said goodnight to each other; and, by the pile of aluminum cans, I could see I was going to have to buy more beer. By his energy and passion in talking about the ski industry, I was beginning to realize Mr Heins quite possibly . . . could burn more carbohydrates in the talking about skiing . . . than in the actual skiing itself. And I could tell . . . that our conversations together . . . would have much more depth and insight and impact on society . . . than My Dinner With Andre.