Guest Post by Tom Schwandt. My comments in blue.
Hello followers of Brian’s Blog! I have the honor of being a guest writer on
Brian’s blog, I will try to write clearly, descriptively, and hope to stay on
topic much better than Brian does when he writes blog posts, and that shouldn’t
be too hard. If you are new to Brian’s
blog, welcome! His blog about his time
in Germany, if you come to learn something about a different culture, you’re
out of luck, here it seems you will find out about just every random thought
that goes through Brian’s mind such as inefficient double doors and
stroopwaffles, which I find somewhat educational, let’s get started..
The past week we all spent the week in Montana snowskiing at
Big Sky (our uncle is nice enough to let us stay at his condo). Kevin (brother), Megan (girlfriend, not mine
Kevin’s), Ryan (friend), Brian and I.
The story starts like any other, we were enjoying a relaxing vacation,
the weather was warm, in fact Big Sky had never had so little snow, we were
enjoying catching up with Brian. Now, if
you’ve ever been on a Schwandt Ski trip you would know this, but I’m convinced
that if there is a Schwandt along… something bad will happen automobile
related, it’s just the reality.*
Anyways, the weather was warm, the snow was not very good,
it’s been one of the worst winters for Montana skiing in 25 years. Instead of paying for an expensive lift ticket, we
decided to do some hiking and snow shoeing at a place called Beehive Basin
(it’s free, you park, hike up and ski down).
SO, the five of us head out that day, and hike up and ski down once, it
was a fun time.
Day 2, We all head up to Big Sky, the snow is still sub
par. Kevin and Megan decide that they
will ski the day, Brian doesn’t really want to and I have a season pass at Big
Sky so I have skied enough good days to not ski at Big Sky on a somewhat crappy
day. So I tell the group I’ll go hike up
Beehive Basin again with Brian no problem.
Ryan has his work laptop and has some work to do so he stays in the
lodge that day. Brian and I head off to
Beehive Basin. We park the car, we open
up the skibox on top with all our equipment, load up, and head off hiking. The hike itself to the top takes us about 1
hour, maybe a little bit more. I think it was more like two hours due to me being out of shape.
We get to the top, set all of our stuff down and sit at the
top of the mountain for awhile, then I feel for the keys (Brian drove) and say “oh Brian, I don’t think I have the keys, you
have them?..” Brian then replies,
without checking his pockets, I don’t even know if he comprehended (I do this a lot) what I said
“yup, got em!”, and both of us, like the idiots we are, didn’t question
it! Now let me tell you problem number
one, Brian and I are really spacey and scatterminded, you never send us off to
do anything, not alone and especially not both of us together, the results are
bad when it’s anything organizationally related.
We ski back to the car, and brian looks through his
pockets.. yes, no keys haha you couldn’t make this stuff up. We search our back packs, my pockets, the
car.. “who had the keys?” We don’t know.. “Did you put them in your pockets? I
don’t know”.. let’s retrace our steps, ok, just a mile of snow between here and
the top along with another mile of tracks we crossed to ski down. Brian searches the car, and works on hotwiring
the car via the internet (he’s an electrical engineer, how hard could it be?
Like his recent power electronics exam, he worked in power electronics, how
hard could it be? I've seen movies... it takes them like 12 seconds... i really thought this was an option) I hike back up to see
if I can come across the keys. Long
story short, nothing and nothing. We
find no keys, we can’t hotwire the car.
We grab our stuff and start hiking up the road on our way out of beehive
basin back to Big sky, about 5 miles away. It’s snowing and there’s already two inches on
the pavement. After a mile a nice family
from Maryland gives us a ride to Big Sky.
We reunite with the rest of the group, and they take the
news well, probably cause they’re not surprised that Brian and I would do something
so stupid, and they probably blame themselves for letting me and Brian go by
ourselves in the first place. The next
few days are a blend of us analyzing schedules for busses and shuttles, calling
ex boyfriends (Megan's... not mine or Tom's) for rides, walking, running, hitchhiking, taxis, valet services
to the Yellowstone club, jalapeno poppers, steam rooms without steam, phone
calls to car dealerships, and much more.
It would take too long to tell but it’s worth hearing so please ask
Brian and you’re sure to enjoy it J. But in the end Brian and I went to Bozeman
and got another key made for our car and we made it back to Fargo safely and on
time. Brian and I are engineers, you
see, we think critically, we’re good at solving problems… we also usually cause
the problems, maybe that’s why we’re good at solving them?? Food for
thought.. Thanks for reading, and tune
in for next year’s family ski trip, it’s bound to be an exciting one!
It should be noted that we let the car sit in the backcountry of Big Sky for about 3 days. Prioritizing is important, and our priority was to enjoy the snow that was about to come. Right after we lost the keys we got a lot of snow. We skied the Yellowstone Club the next day, which is where billionaires like to ski (seriously... google it), then we skied big sky the next day. Great skiing! By the time we got to the car... it looked like this:
When I got there people were checking out the car wondering if someone had died in an avalanche or something... Nope! Just a couple people that can't keep track of their keys!
The whole experience was pretty exciting. We still don't know who to blame for loosing the keys. It was probably Tom... but it could also have very well been me.
*We’ve had transmissions blow out, hitchhiked, slept at
mechanics shops overnight, had dead batteries, had people fall asleep at the
wheel, been rear ended by grey hound busses, had Ski toppers fly off, people
throwing up, etc. etc. and etc.
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