The Worst Ski Hill in the 25th Flattest State

Dear Friends,

The Hard Taco song for February is called, "Mud Between My Toes." I'm going to give you the same advice that the old singing tree gave Pocahontas: listen with your heart. Of course, Pocahontas didn't have headphones, so you have more choices.

Wisconsin is the 25th flattest state in the Union. (See Figure 1, The United States Ranked by Flatness.) It is neither flat as a pancake, nor as mountainous as a wedding cake. It is a deflated soufflé, and its topographical mediocrity makes it the ideal downhill skiing destination for those of us who enjoy small hills. I have never skied in Colorado or Montana; I'm just not into long runs. I'm a small hill enthusiast. There is nothing more exhilarating than carving through a fresh line of pow-pow for exactly 1 minute 15 seconds.

Figure 1. Florida's state motto: "The Cross-Country Skier's Delight."

I cut my teeth as a small hill enthusiast in one of Milwaukee's premier middle school ski clubs: Blizzard or Snowstar. I don't remember which one I was in, but I remember that the other one sucked cheese curds. Either Blizzard or Snowstar was full of gnar shredders like me, while Snowstar or Blizzard was just a bunch of gapers, bombers, and snowplowing wannabes.

The kids in the other club pinned their lift tickets to their main zippers. Are you kidding me? We pinned our lift tickets to our pocket zippers.

They preferred camouflage balaclavas. Were they crazy? We preferred balaclavas with fluorescent skull faces.

They preferred small hills that were sick. Whatever, dude. We preferred small hills that were sweet and rad. Obviously, Snowstar or Blizzard was way better than the competition in every way.

The only thing that kids in both clubs agreed on is that we hated skiing at Crystal Ridge Ski Resort. Crystal Ridge was the worst ski park in Southeast Wisconsin because it was built on top of an old Milwaukee County landfill. We never actually saw garbage, but we knew it was there. Looking down from the chairlift, we were convinced that we were not seeing moguls, but subterranean depositions of discarded furniture and dismembered mob snitches.

I don't mean to imply that there is anything wrong with repurposing municipal waste. That part was ingenious. The reason that Crystal Ridge was such a terrible ski hill was not that it was built on a landfill, but that it was built on an old landfill.

A new landfill is a hole in the ground. As garbage is deposited, it becomes progressively less concave. It doesn't achieve "old landfill" status until it is completely full and the trash is flush with the surrounding terrain. An old landfill is a lake of garbage, not a mountain of garbage. Only in Milwaukee would someone think to cover that with snow and call it a ski hill.

My family and I are going skiing up North this weekend. We haven't done this in a couple of years, and Lauren and I are a little nervous, a little more aware of our limits. As we've aged, the cushion that separates a torn meniscus from being abandoned in a nursing is just a bit smaller. On the other hand, the risk of injury is measurably lower than when I was a kid in Wisconsin, because this time, we're skiing in the 22nd flattest state.

With warmest regards,
Zach

The Sun is Flat

Dear Friends,

    Has anyone else noticed that if you take the 'ac' out of 'Hard Taco Digest,' you're left with 'Hard To Digest'? You know what else is hard to digest without the AC? My car! And my house! It's turning into a real scorcher out there this summer and I don't know where I would be without modern urban amenities like temperature control.

   You know, when you're a hard working rock band on the road, one of things you really notice is that different motels have different air conditioning units. We always stay at Red Roof Inn, primarily because their Member Rewards rooms used to come standard with the Friedrich Quietmaster SL35J30. There's nothing like the comfort and peacefulness of a noiseless split system AC unit when you're feverishly trashing a motel room in a drunken rage.

    That's how it used to be, anyway. This last year, Red Roof downgraded their AC's, and it's changed things a bit. First of all the whole band quit drinking altogether. In fact, we usually just make the groupies stay on the bus after the show, because the low hum of the new units is such a killjoy we all just feel like sitting around and watching TV. Sometimes we'll play Uno, but even that seems unnecessarily demanding with all that low-grade white noise in the background. The room temperature is fine, I guess, but being cool doesn't make you cool, as they say.

     Speaking of being uncool, you know who is number one on my "Forget You!" list this week? Weird Al. That guy doesn't have his finger on the pulse of anything.

    This month's song is called "Flatness," and it's a tribute to stubborn reactionaries everywhere. Those of us who ask ourselves if the Earth is really round, and come up with the only logical conclusion... Yes! Round like a pizza. The sun is also flat, by the way.

With warmest regards,

HT