Snowboarders. They remind me of hipsters, but without the irony. They also seem to enjoy a general camaraderie, instead of the special uniqueness that hipsters cultivate.

This afternoon I shared a gondola cab with a trio of snowboarders. (Boarders? Riders? As as skier, I’m too square to keep up with the terminology.) One of them, my hand to god, used the word “gnarly” without a hint of irony. As in, “They went out to [some cool place], but they couldn’t do anything gnarly because there wasn’t enough snow [or something, I forget exactly what she said].”

Earlier in the day I overheard another boarder use “gondy” for “gondola” and “pow” for “powder,” again, completely seriously. This must be what it’s like for people who come to the South and hear us say “y’all” like it’s no big deal.

In related news, I skied today for the first time in almost four years. Good snow, decent weather, and I didn’t fall down: a good day.

For the few of you who haven’t heard through email, text message, Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter, but mostly so this momentous occasion doesn’t get left out of my blog, John and I got engaged last week on our trip to Colorado. Squee!

Before we started planning the vacation, we’d talked about how we might be able to move our conjectural wedding date up six months or so from what we’d thought, so I suspected a proposal was coming, but I didn’t know exactly when.

On our first full day in Colorado, John picked out a hike for us up towards Pacific Peak, thanks to this handy website. The weather was perfect, and the views of mountains and blue sky all around were breathtaking.

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