Word: resorting
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...road to the mountain I ski at brings me out of Montana and into another world, a world full of people I love to hate. From the arrogant smugness of the man sporting the Vail hat to be the spoiled kids who whine about the bad food, this ski resort, like all ski resorts, is populated by 2 percent locals and 98 percent out-of-town skiers...
Overpriced resort food (which is usually left for someone else to clean up) serves as an excellent medium to discuss the morning's adventures. Conversation centers on how good or bad the snow is (usually worse than it was at Aspen last year) and how much better the new pair of skis are (as if the latest model really makes a difference for someone who's greatest accomplishment on skis happens to be their participation in the feat of engineering designed to haul them up the hill...
Juxtaposed against these movers and shakers on spring break are the lift operators, ski patrol and resort workers: the locals. These tough and hardy souls sacrifice their "earning potential," as we would say in Harvard vernacular, for something we don't have: 120 days of skiing a year in the peace, beauty and allure of the mountains...
...course this job comes with definite drawbacks. It is here where the esteem society places on different professions translates into snobbery. Many resort guests constantly be little resort workers, failing to act kindly towards or even acknowledge those paid by the hour. They (and sometimes we) are too busy enjoying the fruits of their labor to act with common decency. But on the whole, a local's life of powder, blue skies and simplicity is appealing to someone who swims in problem sets and essays even while on vacation...
...resort guest's propensity to write off the lives of the locals as insignificant in comparison to their own grandiose existence, they sometime forget that the freedom locals have is precisely what they lack. These pompous guests I see every day at the ski resort are people for whom freedom was traded for money, success and one week of skiing a year. These are people we are in danger of becoming...