The annual ski blog

I canceled my planned skurfing trip to Cali because of the warm weather there. Instead I chased up North to Vermont, where I have found powder heaven! Wi fi works in the hotel, phone doesn't--go figure.

I'll have more chances to go to California this year.

In a strange coincidence, this makes the third St. Patrick's Day in a row where I have been a) skiing b) in a snowstorm. Last two times were in Colorado, where, in another bizarre coincidence, I had the same ski instructor that day both years. He was a grizzled old guy with an Irish name. Both times, we got to talking about the book I was working on. That makes me kind of wish I had seen him again this St. Patty's so I could have told him the book is actually getting published! Well, due to the wonders of the internet, maybe grizzled old guy will read this. Chances are small, but what the hell. Hey old guy ski instructor from Steamboat, I'm the woman from New York in the powder blue jacket!

Celebration time, at last

Today I got the news that my first book is going to be published! That's the one I've been working on for the past five years, folks. And it's a very good publisher and the advance is more than enough for the new surfboard I've had my eye on.

Oh come on, I hear you saying. What's the big deal? Lots of surfers write books. Why, there's...

I'm waiting...

I don't know any surfer who even reads books.

OK, actually there is one surfer I know of who wrote a book. It's a book about surfing, but it still counts. It's an intelligent book by a guy who works as a journalist, proving that some surfers can not only spell, but think. I recommend you read it: West of Jesus by Stephen Kotler.

And I recommend you read my book when it comes out in bookstores in July of 2008. You won't find a word about surfng in it.

Here's the beginning of his:

"In The White Album, Joan Didion wrote, 'We tell ourselves stories in order to live,' and then proceeded to tell a story about a time in her life when the stories she told herself began to fail. Which may be how things go for many of us, and certainly it was for me. In the fall of 2003, at a time when I was making my living as a journalist; at a time when the president of the United States comfortably dismissed the idea of Darwinian evolution in favor of a more economic, six-day approach; at a time when certain members of Congress were trying to remake a democracy in their own image; at a time when I was recovering from a long and nagging illness; when many of the people around me began getting married, having children, moving away, or on, or staying exactly where they were, without me; at a time a pair of hurricanes were heavy on the neck of Central America, I went to Mexico to surf. I went because of these things. I went because the stories I told myself had begun to fail."