“This is the biggest piece of shit I’ve ever driven!”

– Actual quote by a cop called James who helped with a little rental car problem.

March 29th, 2019.

[ Feb 1st – 2019.] I hadn’t seen Rob in close to ten years. We planned this trip over Facebook messenger and somehow we’d arranged to spend the next 17 days together – skiing lines, sinking beers and driving across the USA listening to Bruce Springsteen and eating popcorn in a Ford F-150 rental. It’s like we were 21 again and heading to Paris for the weekend with no accommodation – ‘cause we’d just stay out all night.

Anyway. I landed at Salt Lake City airport first – tired, hungry, excited and cold. I got a coffee and walked over to oversize luggage to pick up my ski-bag. After a quick look-see – I found out that the airline had left this in San Francisco and that it’d “probably” be on the next flight.

Great.

Rob landed from London (via Seattle). He was tired, already acclimatised and probably less excited than me. We headed over to oversize luggage to pick up his ski-bag. Not there either.
Yep – still in Seattle.
Probably on the next flight.
No problem John.
Let’s go pick up the truck.

“What was the name of the booking?”, said Mr Enterprise Car Rental.
No truck either.
We hopped in an uber and went to a bar.

It wasn’t the best of starts – but the next two and a half weeks were all uphill (both figuratively and literally). Steep mountains, deep snow, epic lines, more “yeeeeeehawww”s than a 1950’s cowboy movie, a lot of tacos, a lot of Reese Cups, a lot of kilometres and some great food at Chilli’s in Reno. The Ski-Road-Trip of a lifetime. Or of the year anyway.

The ski-bags arrived at 2am on the first night. We ski’d the next morning.