Bumming on the Powder Hound (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine February 2003

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Bumming on the Powder Hound (Cont.)


	Pendleton, Oregon: If you're not back in 15 minutes, make sure you've got money for your next meal. (Sian Kennedy)

WHEN MAKING TURNS with good people in good snow, the bus seems far away. I was back in the USA now, at the rough end of the pineapple. Unlike in spiffy Canada, each bus in America has a different mood, a different smell. Sometimes the bus smelled like french fries. Cigarette smoke in clothing. A hint of marijuana. Often the bus smelled foul. Diapers, hangover breath, body odor. I had coffee and mustard stains on my pants, bearing grease on my parka from old chairlift guide wheels. Greasy bibs. Greasy hair, which I kept under my hat. I washed my polypropylene underwear in a sink when I could. Road food. Often the bad smells on the bus came from me.

When your reading light works, it's like winning the door prize—a little victory, a beam from heaven. This truck stop has a Quizno's? I'm a king!

We had trouble in Salem, Oregon: A well-dressed African-American gentleman (the only passenger in 5,000 miles who wore a tie) approached the driver. I figured he wanted off at an unscheduled stop, but he was complaining about being harassed by a skinhead, who was blaring his skinhead music from enormous headphones that he aimed at this man's seat. That was it. The driver stopped the bus, called the police. Salem's finest pulled the skinhead off, cuffed him, and stuffed him in the back of the patrol car. The gentleman stepped back on, and we were on the road again. Ashland is a flag stop along the interstate. The driver dumped my skis in the dark and revved off to California. "Where's the town?" I asked the only other passenger getting off here. He pointed to more darkness.

"About two miles," he said.

"Thanks."

I built up a good sweat. I could see the lights of Mount Ashland above me. I crested a hill into a residential area, and there was the lighted front porch of the Ashland Hostel. Welcome, traveler. Within moments I was sitting in front of a fire, talking telemark with new friends Jardin and Cody. For 18 bucks I had a bunk. The dreadlocked commune of the hostel is, curiously, a lot like the community on the bus. The hostelfarians were all veterans of the Green Turtle, the Furthur-like merry prankster outfit that trucks lazily up and down the Left Coast.

I skied Mount Ashland with two locals, Tom and Felicia. The three of us had the entire weekday mountain to ourselves, and there isn't a friendlier mom-and-pop in winter. When I broke the weld on my left SuperLoop toepiece—these bindings had been a vale of tears from the start—Doug, head of the ski patrol, tried to fix them, and when he couldn't, the rental shop comped me a pair of bondage boards and boots to match. From the top of Mount Ashland, I could see Mount Shasta. To the southwest I could make out the tiny interstate convenience store that's also the Ashland bus stop. A military jet blew over. It occurred to me just how ephemeral flight is. These diesels will go on forever.

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