Serendipity can't be beat! Here I am, deftly ignoring the hole in my soul left by the finishing of this year's Tour de France. I'm feeling a little numb...which is to say, I'm not feeling anything...not excited about anything today. Then I'm winding down before bed, surfing the web...when I find a video that just plain cracked me up.
In my 30+ years living in the High Sierra and working in the ski industry, I've witnessed a fair number of stupid human tricks...so many frickin' follies that I've become jaded to the foolishness and the dumb as a stump screw-ups.
Every season I'm sure I've seen it all...that there's no possible way to be shown a new low. And every year my faith in mankind's remarkable survival these many millions of years is renewed despite man's ability to outsmart himself and court injury, property damage, and even death while walking upright..."It's OK...I've got it this time..."
Most of these stupid human tricks sort of evolve in real time as the out-thinker links a series of bad decisions, faulty assumptions, and knee-jerk reactions, resulting in the inevitable disaster for them, and any innocent bystanders (read fellow motorists, chairlift partners, chain installers, snowplow drivers...the list is endless) These are organic accidents...happenstance..."bad luck".
Tonight's video is something I've never seen in these 30+ years of mountain living and working. Sadly, this is a Premeditated Stupid Human Trick.
Behold the AUDI Snowplow:
This is wrong on so many levels...
As a Red-Blooded American Male, I've been a lover of cars since I was a boy in the late fifties, the era of chrome, tail fins, and big American V8 horsepower. I came of age in the Muscle Car Era, and learned to appreciate European Sports Sedans during the Disco Dust fueled Go Greed Go 80's.
When this AUDI 90 Quattro was showroom fresh, it was a highly desired ride by skiers, snowboarders and posers alike. Style, performance, comfort and solid Teutonic utility, all wrapped up in one refined package.
At the time, my auto-lust was for the AUDI's contemporary, the BMW 325ix, though I remember lamenting out loud that the 325ix didn't come as a convertible...hey...a removable hardtop would have made the 4X4 ixRagtop the perfect TruckeeMobile! No snowplow attachments allowed!
Reality? When these rigs were new...1986/1987, I was driving a '74 Power Wagon and buying a new leftover 1982 Yamaha 750 Maxim motorcycle.
You know, the AUDI Snowplow reminds me of another weird mountain mash-up machine, Alpine Meadows' "Bandwagon"...now that I've thought about that contraption for a season, I believe it too is wrong on so many levels.
I guess that these poor "performance artists" actually enrich my life in the long run...I hope they never run out of ways to surprise me.
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