The small room was dark, lit only from the glow outside as the moon light reflected off the snow and in through the large windows, casting shadows across the bed and its occupant. The man, to describe in any other way would be preposterous given his size and the growing stubble on his chin. He lay enveloped in his covers, his mouth open and breathing loudly. The room itself was rather bare, with a mixture of different lives and times spread across the room; a dead chipmunk stared stiffly at the man from its perch on the wall, next to its equally stiff neighboring shark that swam along the wall towards the window; old comic books sat next to bright new ones on the shelf, and a desk below was covered in Da Vinci-like sketches of unrealized flying machines. A heavy olive green jacket was hanging on the door with the matching pants draped over the chair, mostly dry from the previous day.   

      Then a warped version of  “When the Saints go Marching in” filled the room. What had always been an inspirational song had turned into the shrill cry of a phone alarm, shrieking its voice into the night, indiscriminate of the discomfort it caused. Rupert tried to ignore it, stuffing his face into the pillow and closing his ears from the phone. When the five minute snooze kicked in, Rupert reached over and silenced the phone to the relief of everyone else in the house. In the room next door, Frank rolled over with a sigh of relief and closed his eyes, ready to return to sleep. His relief was short lived as Rupert walked in and rudely grabbed his shoulder. Frank moaned, indicating his desire to continue his delicious sleep, undisturbed. To hell with his idea of finally going down the backside of the mountain together with the Bartlets. Frank had no intention of getting out of bed where he had been flying over some strange mountains.  He had no desire to get up into the cold and go down the snowy slopes where all that awaited them was a cold, and incredibly wet morning of misery. No. He was not going to get out of bed. Rupert pulled the covers off his brother and went to wake the other two siblings. With a groan Frank rolled out of bed, having resigned himself to a dreadful day and stumbled into the shower. 

      In the mean time, their ever so sweet mother had already prepared breakfast for her loud children, and sat down to patiently watch them slowly, one by one, make their appearance from the small staircase that led down to the kitchen and family room. She heared the loud steps as her second son came out of the shower and went to his room to dress. This was followed by a the loud thumping of her two youngest racing for the shower and shoving each other into the walls to get ahead of one anther. The strong and steady steps of her eldest son were conspicuously absent. She smiled knowingly and went upstairs to wake Rupert. After having jostled his siblings awake, he’d seen no reason not to go back to sleep. Why stay awake when he could sleep while waiting for the shower? Calvin and Susie quickly finished their showers, constantly out pacing each other to be the first to get to breakfast. As Calvin and Susie tumbled down the stairs, their mother greeted them with a frown and breakfast. 

      “You two are the loudest things that ever entered this house. Unless you quiet down you risk losing your breakfast.” The two children smiled, and rushed to the table, the girl reaching for the Nutella and the boy for the bread, each thinking to head the other off. Frank finished dressing and walked over to his older brother’s room, finding Rupert sprawled on his bed, once again breathing loudly into the room. With a disgusted look, Frank rolled him off the bed and went downstairs after having assured himself that Rupert had indeed gotten up and was in the shower. 

      Downstairs the food was almost gone. All the good bread and most of the Nutella had seemingly disappeared into the bottomless pits that were Calvin and Susie. Frank scrambled for the near empty jar and started to eat. Susie looked up from her food, “Where’s Rupert?”  Frank replied through a mouthful of chocolate and bread, “He just got into the shower.” The two youngest groaned in disgust and set about getting their boots and outer garments on. Frank finished his scant meal and went back up stairs. “Rupert! Hurry up and get out of the shower!” 

      About twenty minutes later, the three younger siblings were in the basement, pulling their boots on and tightening their straps. Susie reached over with her gloved arms to have Frank tighten the bottoms of her gloves over her white jacket. Calvin scoffed at her and proceeded to put on his helmet. The girl let out a subdued shriek and turned to Frank. He sighed and put down his boots to pull her gloves over her jacket and tighten them when Rupert calmly walked in through the door with helmet and pads in hand. “Are you serious?!” Calvin had looked up from his boots in time to see his eldest brother walk in. “It’ll take you another hour to put all those pads on!” Rupert ignored him and sat down to strap them on. First the elbow pads. He slid his arms through the elastics, adjusted them carefully so that they wouldn’t rub his arms when he moved them. Once he was satisfied, he tightened just as carefully, not too tight, but not too loose either. Then came the knee pads with the same process.   

      By the time he got to his boots, his younger siblings were all waiting impatiently with skis and snowboards in hand. Susie picked up her skis, “I’m not waiting anymore. Let’s go.” She walked out the door as light started to filter over the horizon.  

      “Wait up Susie! It’ll take him a couple more minutes, not more than that.” Frank turned to Rupert, “Come on, hurry up.” Rupert nodded, not really paying attention, and pulled on his boots, beginning to tighten them. 

      Calvin got up, “I’m going to go outside and play in the snow.” He picked up his skis and went out the door. Rupert continued to tighten his boots with the same meticulousness he used for tightening his pads. Finally, he finished tightening the boots, and stomped them for good measure. Satisfied that they were perfectly tightened, he got up, put his helmet on, and pulled on 

his gloves with padded wrists. He turned to the wall where his huge snowboard leaned against the wall, and reached for it. Then he stopped in mid reach and pulled his gloves off to tighten his helmet. Frank groaned in exasperation and headed out the door with his own snowboard. The light from the rising sun was now starting to come through the door, illuminating the rest of the basement. Once again, Rupert pulled his gloves on and this time picked up his snowboard. He finally headed out the door and into the six foot snow trench that led from the house to the road below. He took a couple steps out when a kicking and screaming Calvin went flying over his head and smacked into the opposing wall of the trench where the start of a snow cave was being excavated. Rupert didn’t even pause, he just kept walking to the road where Frank waited with his snowboard on his shoulder and Susie sat next to hers and Calvin’s skis. Calvin picked himself up with a shrug and ran after Rupert. Once they were all together, the two skiers picked up their skis and without a word they all trudged towards the icy road that went up a few turns and met the slopes on the edge of a wide curb as the sun rose higher in the distance. 

      Too bad the Kohls had taken a bit too long in getting ready. By now, the slopes had plenty of skiers who’d had the same brilliant idea, and the lift was just as full. Rupert and Frank sat in the chair in front of Calvin and Susie. Rupert looked around, “Where are the others?” 

      “How should I know?”  

      “Call them, you have their number.”   

      Frank pulled his gloves off and unzipped the small pocket on his ski pants, pulling out a beaten Nokia cellular that had clearly seen better days. He gave his gloves to Rupert without looking and dialed a number. A moment later the other picked up. “Where are you guys, Monica? Are you serious?! How did you get Henry out of bed that early?! Whatever, we’ll see you at the top of the lift then.” 

      He put the phone back in his pant’s pocket and turned to Rupert for his gloves back. “So what did they say? Where are they?” Frank ignored him as he put his gloves on, careful to put every finger into the right part of the glove. “Well?” 

      Finished with the gloves, Frank looked up, “Thanks to you, they beat us to the slopes, so they’re already- ” 

      “PENNUTO!!!!!!!!”  

      Frank was interrupted by Calvin who yelled the customary identification of an incompetent skier or snowboarder that thought he was hot stuff. Rupert and Frank looked in the direction Calvin was pointing, and sure enough, there he was. He was a snowboarder, dressed in the very fashionable gangster snow gear with black palm trees painted on a bright green background, and no helmet. He came down the slope like a sled, just going straight, with an occasional convulsion to fake a turn. The four waited anxiously for it, and sure enough, as soon as the pennuto hit a small bump, he went flying, head over heels and became a giant cloud of snow that continued without pause. The four laughed in unison at his idiocy, drowned out by Susie and Calvin as they laughed the hardest, mostly from experiences of their own in making snow clouds.  

      Frank turned back to Rupert, “They’re at the top of the lift.  They’ll just wait for us there.” 

      Rupert nodded, “Okay.” 

      They approached the landing at the top of the lift. They lifted their boards, angling them up, braced themselves, made contact, and smoothly exited the lift. With a smooth curve they came to rest in front of an odd assortment of six individuals, three girls, tow boys, and a man. Bonnie stood there stoically with her broken arm in a cast covered with a giant glove and her racing striped jacket and flowing wool cap, which probably knitted by herself during school hours when she had already finished her assignments. She and Frank went to school together.  Henry was just eccentric, wearing a ski suit that had been new at least two decades ago, tall and gangly with a ready smile. Monica was striking as usual, with her mass of black curls tucked into her helmet and already turning to the Kohls with arms outstretched. Julie was sitting on the ground, fastening her snowboard with her father, Mark, standing over her. Calvin and Susie came off the lift with the same grace their older brothers had and slid to a stop next to them. After the usual hellos and hugs, Frank looked around, “Everyone ready?” Rupert was still fastening his back foot into his board. Frank looked down at his own foot, and sure enough, he had still to fasten them too. He quickly fell to the ground and buckled in, just in time as Rupert got up, and started going. “Lets go guys!” and the horde of friends went down the slight incline towards the serious slopes and, even more importantly, the fresh snow that lay just beyond the edges of the official ski slopes. 

      At the next ski lift, the group divided again, this time into groups of three and four to accommodate the larger chairs and their large number, careful not to let anyone go on their own. Calvin, Henry, and Julie were all on the same chair when Julie, grinning like a maniac reached into her pocket and pulled out a small box. With a mischievous smile, she looked at the other two and pulled out a small cylinder. “Watch this.” She struck it on the side of the box like a match, and dropped the slowly smoking cylinder to the ground six feet below.  The three turned around expectantly, and sure enough, Frank was brusquely interrupted in his conversation with Bonnie and Danny by a loud bang and a shower of snow. “Hey!” The three gremlins started to cackle and turned around, looking for another victim. A little girl came over the rise at just the right moment, and Calvin reached for the box, lit the firecracker, and bang! The girl shrieked and went head over heels into a snowdrift. The three laughed even louder. Luckily for other skiers, the end of the lift was quickly approaching.  Julie grabbed the box, and quickly stuffed it back into her pocket, just in time to get off the lift without a hitch. 

      The freezing wind moved the loose snow in a wrinkled flow that moved over the ridge and shaped the snow into a lipped overhang three hundred or so meters above the two lane street below.  This closed area was just outside the wide banking turn of the main slope. After the turn and between the drop-off and paved snow, the wind had carved a few features into the landscape that had been illuminated by the morning sun that came over the mountain. Rupert rode to the head of this area, leaned forward and slid the other way, turning about in one swift, clean move, hands always at his side. Loose snow kicked up from underneath his board and rose up the hill like wisps of smoke caught in the wind and graced his chin. Facing up the mountain and squinting at the blinding sunlight through his orange fogged-up anti-fog goggles, he kneeled down for what he hoped was going to be a short time. The strong wind was screaming up his back and the chill was biting.   

      “This is it,” he called out to the group of wackos coming in fast a short distance behind him. “Who’s up for it? It’s craz-  Ahhhhhh!” A spray of snow from Calvin got into Rupert’s mouth and into the deep reaches of his jacket. 

      “Remember when you did that to me? So, ha!” Calvin now stood there, hanging from his ski poles, eager for what new backcountry Rupert had to show him. Julie and Frank slid down waiting for them to move, the others continued on the groomed path. The burdened snowboarder beat his coat then got up and snarled at the little gremlin. He made the shape of a gun with his huge hands and shot him before being sent back by gravity and progressing on down. 

      He stopped above the curious feature that had caught his eye the day before; it looked like a three meter wave, frozen just before the white foam crest starts to form and cup back into the ocean. “Calvin, so what you’re supposed to do is gain speed and, once you enter, keep yourself as close to the side as you can.  It’s fun if you also stay as high as you can, you’ll be horizontal.”

      Calvin parked next to him and expressed concern for his own safety, “Won’t the snow fall on you?” 

      The goggles were useless. “I’ll explain, one second.” Rupert struggled to take them off, he could only move so much with all he had on him. With his gloves, he wiped what he could which was all but the top and bottom sections. “If you keep your track small and don’t move a lot of snow you should be fine. Although, if it fell, wouldn’t that be cool, skiing for your life and keeping from being sucked by a tunnel of snow?” 

      Frank was slowly sliding over, using his hands to pull himself. His turn was too wide. Julie waited just off the paved slope, still in the midst of deciding if she should follow these three adventurers.  She got up from that spot that was making her cold and decided to join them as the three stared back at her.   

      First to head down was Rupert, to demonstrate how he thought it should be done. Entering the wave, he crouched, facing the curved mass of snow three inches in front of his face. He angled the front of his board up and climbed like a pilot who pulls back on the elevators once he has gained enough speed to take off. The trail behind his board could have been left by the thin blades of a skater in a centrifuge. Going out, he went for a small jump that he quickly landed and made a radial plow in the snow to face his brothers and Julie on the other side.  

      Frank followed, his mark was not as high. “There’s nothing wrong with playing it safe, right?” 

      Just after he finished and regrouped, Calvin zoomed down and, in an attempt to reach Rupert’s mark, made a step in the snow with his skis. He did get high enough, but had lost speed.  To get it back and conserve the thrill, he directed his skis down so he could take the end of the tunnel for a jump. Rupert and Frank got ready, they covered their face and and looked away.  He left the snow with a scream of excitement, “Yaoooo!” and landed not too far from his brothers to engage in a massive snow spray. A few seconds came by and Rupert and Frank looked back. Calvin was still standing. “Oh... Darn it!” Not much snow had moved from under his skis. 

      And then the cloud came, they were all covered in snow. Rupert was waving his hands to get it out of the way and took his googles off to wipe them once again. As the snow settled they could see Julie siting above, grinning.