I’m sitting in the back of a shuttle bus. The bus, or shuttle, plans to disgorge my friends and I three miles away from here. At Alpine. Odd to sleep at Squaw and traipse through puddles of rain to a shuttle headed someplace else. There are four carbon life forms–five if I count the driver–in addition to my friends and I. Nine souls. Windshield wipers on. Averaging maybe 5 MPH. At a standstill more often than not.

And somehow the driver is dialed to perhaps the best radio station that has ever existed. No one has given the call letters yet, so I don’t know what it is, where it is based, and/or how this is possible. Echo and the Bunnymen. And the next song is BB King or at least I think it’s BB. And then? This could be Jim Croce or maybe Asia.

The mix of songs is impossible. Ten minutes ago, I offered aloud, “This is literally the last song I would have expected to hear today. If you held a gun to my head and forced me to list every song that I could possibly hear today, this would be the one at the absolute bottom of the list. Penciled in only at the urging of the individual brandishing said gun to said head.”

One of the songs had a lyric, “Satan is Real.” Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. Or she. Could be a woman. No?

So it is a very odd bus we’re on. Strange dynamic. Great, unexpected music. And rain. I would handicap the odds of actually skiing today in the single digits. And I’m OK with that. Turn up the volume please, driver.

Thanks for reading.