The rain has been slanting in the Northwest for the last three days. YMCAs and health clubs everywhere are starting their shape-up programs for skiing. I was pretty lucky because I stayed in shape during the summer months surfing at least two times a week.
How many people do you know who spend an hour or more commuting each way to and from work? Remember, if you are one of those commuters you are wasting 10 or more hours a week or 500 or more hours a year.
I was over 60 years old before I had my business in shape so that I could retire and build a home at a ski resort and work out of it. I can still remember the excitement I felt the first day I walked out of that house in my ski clothes with my skis over my shoulder to go ride the gondola at Lionshead in Vail.
My wife tells me I spent my whole life playing and I would be the last one in the world to argue with her about that position.
When I got out of the Navy in the summer of 1946 I bought a $200 homemade teardrop trailer and three months later went on a ski trip that still continues to this day.
I officially dropped out of college and went skiing for the rest of my life. Today, a lot of young people decide that if they load chairlifts or shovel snow for a year or two they can work their way up into a management position and not have a $300,000 student loan to pay off.
While you’re living in the city you are merely paying rent to house all of your physical possessions and if you really want to go skiing for seven days out of 365 days you will still have to pay storage on all of those possessions. I think the proper term for all of those material possessions is status symbols. It doesn’t matter whether you live in a walk-up apartment somewhere or have 10 acres and a $9 million house in Beverly Hills, when you’re standing on the side of a hill looking down at untracked powder snow don’t wait, jump into it and track it up.
Laurie and I spend our winters at a Montana resort that has 650 employees. You can pick out almost any profession, ranging from a computer operator to a snow-cat driver.
It’s a bit harder to trade your life in the city for a life at a ski resort when you have a family. But a ski resort is a microcosm of the city that you currently live in. A ski resort lifestyle is attainable to anyone who really wants one and all you have to do is want one bad enough.
What’s wrong with spending your life doing what you want to do? There are countless stories of people who started with nothing and became very successful working in a ski resort. For example, Klaus Obermeyer arrived in America with a $10 bill in his pocket and a couple of pair of lederhosen. He hitchhiked to Sun Valley, then went on to Aspen where he started teaching skiing and making ski parkas. Today his company grosses $30 million dollars a year. Another good friend, Ed Siegel, has chosen to live in Sun Valley, Idaho where he practiced his profession as an alcoholic rehab counselor on an almost daily basis unless the snow is really good. He is changing the lives of everyone he talks with.
No one is stopping you from moving to that ski resort. Why not spend those 500 hours skiing down the mountain of your choice. Your life could be changed forever by going on the Internet and looking for job opportunities at a ski resort.