So I managed to avoid running over small children last week.

Iowa State, I know what you’re thinking: Crosbie, give yourself a big pat on the back! It’s not everyday you can say you give that much attention to detail and safety! You should take the rest of the week off!

I should probably mention at this point, before the vagueness of that first paragraph gets me sent to jail or hell, that the reason I was put into a position to run over small children was because last week I went snowboarding. This revelation should clear everything up to everybody except math majors out there who have never been skiing or riding. Right now, they are furiously calculating the surface area that a small child occupies on a run and concluding that it is mathematically impossible to hit a small child because probability dictates it won’t happen.

I put it to you, obnoxiously smart people, that there are few gravitational forces in the universe as powerful as a small child on skis. Particularly one who skis at Vail and whose parents could sue you for most of your major organs should you run over their children.

That’s right Iowa State, my girlfriend and I hit up the white-bosomed slopes of majestic Vail, Colo., and, as the resort town’s slogan says, “There is no comparison.”

In the interest of accuracy, however, that is not true. Rather, Vail is comparable to your standard colonoscopy. It is harsh, uncomfortable and you pay up the ass for it. First, I found Vail to be ridiculously icy. By icy, I mean it was not unlike hockey, except played on snowboards and with a ridiculously steep grade.

So this meant that standard yelps of fear normally emitted from people like me were replaced with small pops as my unskilled colleagues and I broke the sound barrier. Generally, I would not be so concerned with such trivial things as slowing down or, indeed, even stopping, because my strategy for such actions in the past has been simply to fall down and skid. Unfortunately, as I discovered mid-skid, ice cripples this strategy, and I quickly had to formulate a new one that involved hitting a tree. But the kids are safe.

Anyway, aside from the weather, the crowd at Vail was, umm, a bit classier than me. I tried to come up with decent conversation on the lifts up, but these people just didn’t seem to be interested in quoting “Super Troopers.” In order to “break the ice” I briefly considered making up a story about how I’d had my chauffeur Winthrop liquidated because he was insolent. I abandoned this plan because my girlfriend was already a bit annoyed that I had brought out an Irish accent (heavily dependent on rhyming the “F-word” with “book”) for St. Patrick’s Day.

Even she, however, couldn’t avoid rolling her eyes at women who opted for the highly practical skiing ensemble of full makeup (the eye roll was very much like the one she uses when full makeup is seen at the Rec). We were also treated to a highly intelligent conversation in which a young lady described, in detail, how she organized her class schedule around “The OC.” This same young lady further proved her intellectual capacity by expertly providing the critique that “the show rocks but the one-liners in it are sooo fake … “

Of course, I wouldn’t rip into one resort with out offering another as an alternative. Iowa State, I have two words for you — Arapahoe Basin. The lifts are cheap, the snow good and the only makeup on people’s faces is snot. There is absolutely no mention of “The OC,” and if you yell that you lost a dollar — to yourself — people laugh.

It’s my kind of place.