My Mind: Lifesized

Yesterday I thought I was a real man of leisure....I skipped out on work at noon and headed up to Snowbowl (our local ski hill 20 minutes from town) with two of my doctor buddies (who both take Fridays off) for an afternoon of snowboarding. We were all in great spirits and kept throwing quotes out like, "boy, it's really winter up here" as we drove up the mountain on perfectly clear dirt roads that normally would still be under plenty of snow. "Man, I'm glad I layered" and other such sarcastic comments abound...but it has snowed up in the mountains off and on all week so we thought it would be fun to slide down the mountain on a flatboard. And we had a grand time....the snow up top was actually pretty damn nice, and these guys are both much more advanced than I am so it was a hard day of fun and learning for me....we'd do one groomer run and then one tree run; the first tree run was actually just my style, nice wide open areas to turn in and great powde...

This winter has been a rough one in Montana...our snow fall is well below what is needed and the lack of snow hasn't helped the economy either (Montana's number one industry is tourism). You see, Montana is extremely dry in the summer, even arid,and so we depend on the slow melt of high altitude snowpack to keep the water flowing. Unfortunately the mild winter combined with early warm weather all but melted the snow pack around here and left other high altitude areas in Montana and Idaho also in perilous positions. Knowing all this, I was worried about the annual Big Sky Urology conference that took place last week down in Big Sky, Montana; Big Sky is about an hour south of Bozeman and 4 hours or so from Missoula. Even before I moved to Montana I came out to play at the conference because my friends (two of which are now my employers) attended the conference sessions in the morning and afternoon with skiing sandwiched between. Big Sky is a beautiful resort and about as clos...