Karma is a bitch. I suppose it’s a sort of poetic justice that a mere week after my (ski)bum dreams died with a whimper somewhere on a lonely stretch of I-40, that an even bummier ski bum would land on my doorstep. It’s true that he gave me ample time to properly align my chakras prior to his arrival, but is anyone ever really ready for an obnoxiously tall kid with multiple pairs of skis crammed in a Honda Accord to turn up on a lazy afternoon? I sure wasn’t. He’s presently 2-3ft. away from where I type this lying in bed…mercifully, two sheets of drywall and several 2×4’s separate us.

This used to be my living room...now it’s a refugee camp.

It’s snowing outside and if I turn my head 90° to the left, I’m forced to stare at his brand new, never-skied EP Pro’s which he plans to guinea pig at MY home resort bright and early tomorrow morning. Did I mention that I’m six days out from knee surgery? Super considerate…

No, it’s cool, bro...I hate pow days anyway.

 I’m pretty sure that he owes me $200 for a hotel room from our trip to Mt. Snow for last year’s Dew Tour, and this joker just stiffed me on pizza and wings. For his grand finale, he absolutely leveled my bath room and left a poo smear at that crucial point where the water just doesn’t reach in the toilet bowl. His kind have no scruples.

Poo smears can happen to the best of us, but why is the seat up?

I want to take this opportunity to formally apologize to all of our readers for last week’s column which was little more than a shameless—and retrospectively irresponsible—endorsement of the ski bum lifestyle. Consider this an official call to arms…a public service announcement if you will. Please, no matter how charming they seem or adventurous and exciting their travels appear to be, do not invite these derelicts into your homes. I hereby solemnly swear to never impose on my poor friends in such a fashion ever again. And by never again, I mean at least until my knee is healed.

Moving along.

Saturday morning found your bum kneed blogging hero waiting irritably in the ticket office of Taos Ski Valley for his season pass refund. After 20 minutes of generally being in the way and disrupting the flow of the bustling traffic, I was invited into the “employee only” area where I promptly spilled a mug full of piping hot coffee into the innards of a printer. I accept partial responsibility, but the moron who left it in such a precarious position is at least partially to blame. I figured that they would just void my pass and I’d be able to leave with it as a souvenir and a memento of happier times, but it wasn’t to be. Instead, the woman who begrudgingly helped me sop up coffee with paper towels unceremoniously cut my pass in half and tossed it into the trash. The symbolism wasn’t lost on me.

This time next week I will be reclining, milking sympathy through facebook status updates detailing the condition of my post-op knee, and my mother will be doting on me.