Today was a bit of a revelation for me. Closing Day at Vail Mountain. It’s always a party, and this one was the first in two years, we didn’t get a proper Closing Day last year on account of pandemic. So I stopped by some of my favorite vistas, skied a few runs (skiing today was just okay, snow wasn’t soft enough up high, it didn’t warm up enough for good mashed potato snow, weather was cloudy) and then milled about on the summit, where throngs of people with loud portable speakers and costumes were smiling, laughing… and drinking. As most of you know, I’m sober now, more than a year and a half. I waited for a bit to see if I’d run into anyone I knew, but after a while it got too crowded and I moved on. And I excluded myself, for the first time in my adult life, from Closing Day revelries. I was back at my car at 1:30. I tweeted…

Down off the mountain. I felt like the loneliest guy up there.

— Charlie Vogel, aka His Teleness the Charlie Lama (@teleskiguy) April 18, 2021

I felt… out of place. There was feelings of melancholy, like I was on the outside of a good time, looking in. In retrospect, it’s just me coming to grips with the new me, and allowing myself to feel these things. And, I did the right thing. Debaucherous drinking everywhere you look? You probably shouldn’t be hanging out there.

And besides, I’m not done skiing this year. Breckenridge doesn’t close until 31 May (with the snow we’ve got, if they make it to that date I’ll be very surprised), I’ll be meeting my birthday ski buddy on our birthday at Winter Park in a few weeks, and Arapahoe Basin’s closing date is TBD.