This weekend an article appeared in the New York Times titled, "The Return of the Ski Bum".  Return?  As far as I know the Ski Bum never left.  I read on and couldn't help but think that the story sounded all too familiar.  The wheels were turning and an old friend suddenly popped into my head.  His name is Eben Harrell, a guy I met my first year in Aspen who almost became a ski bum himself.

Instead of chasing powder days and wild nights like the rest of us, Eben landed himself a job at The Aspen Times as a reporter.  One of the first stories I remember him writing was about our degenerate group of friends, called "The Quarter-Life Crisis, To be a Ski Bum or not to be?".

Reading the story in the NY Times, it became obvious that in the modern day story of Aspen, the names change, but the characters remain the same.  Your ski buddy or favorite bartender decide for one reason or another that it's time to go, and some new kid rolls into town dying to take his place.  It's simply a shift of actors in an ongoing play.  Once gone, all but the best of friends fade into the background, and the small small world of Aspen continues to turn.

My friends from the Aspen Times article have moved on and are on their way to becoming doctors, lawyers, and professionals in big cities.  Eben Harrell now writes for Time Magazine in London.  We lived like rock stars while still young and turned out not to be such bums after all... all except for myself.  I don't get on the mountain as much as the real ski bums, but I'm still just looking for that one run that makes the entire season worth it.  Today, being waist deep in G4 was pretty close to it, and I wonder if the corporate dropouts and career orphans will stay long enough to understand what I'm really talking about.