NOT LONG BEFORE we planned to fly off to the Alps for our first vacation together, my girlfriend surprised me with a romantic weekend at Taos. Now, I'm a fine skier and all, but X Games, let's call her, turned out to be phenomenal.

She dropped into a shin-bang crouch and arced supersonic turns all the way from windblown summit to shadowy valley, airing off rock outcroppings, lumberjacking through trees, and zipping around intermediate slopes with the quickness of a Formula One race car. I cheered her on from far behind, more enamored than ever.

Not that I expected less. In the few months we'd been dating, X Games had proven ballsier than anyone I knew who actually had balls, and ogling her athletic greatness had become a sort of hobby of mine. She did it all—run, bike, ski, climb—with a grace that allowed her to smile even as she crushed me on a 100-mile road ride.

Like I said, she was super-cool.

"Yeah babe!" I hooted, floundering in the icy mist of her contrail. "Go, sweetness!"

Within the week, she'd dumped me.

Many Ryan Adams ballads later, I'd come to realize that her intuition was right; we didn't click. But as I watched her climb into her black V-8 pickup and drive away for good, one question lingered.

What if I skied better—would she love me then?