Mid week riding. The creme de la creme of reasons to pull a sickie. Mid week riding has drug-like qualities for an elite group, of which many of us are a part. We stoke on life, experiencing euphoric highs and, for me personally, I generally think to myself hey, I am infinitely better off than most people in the world right now. Riding on a weekday reassures me that I must be approaching the upper tiers of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs - if you have never done a level-anything paper in any degree at any institutional organization, this may not be familiar to you. You should google this. The long and the short of it is: I am riding in the middle of the working week, so it is probable that I am living the dream.

The stars have aligned to the point that somehow, working two jobs, whilst co-captaining TFA, I still manage to get a couple of days of quality facetime with Mama Nature, hideously well-timed with spring conditions, bluebird skies and oh, what was that? Oh yes, fresh snow b*tches. How good is that. I’ll tell you how good that is. Its f*cking top notch. Because it’s a four hour drive, door to door. That’s timing.

The thing with people that ski and ride midweek is, they’re all legends. They don’t actually really care about tax law, conference calls or weak excuses why they need to be in the office ordering printer toner. They go hey man, it’s snowing, letz shred. You don’t know who they are, but they are sociable chaps and they love to stoke about the day when you land next to them on the chairlift. And their banter is of the purest quality. They tend not to disclose exactly what it is they do, because it’s some make-believe job title they created just so they could skive off up the hill when the weather calls. They’re riding in next season’s unreleased samples, or never to be re-released high vis threads circa 1989. Or just jeans and a leather jacket and a slick head band offering little to no function, but legit street cred if they happen to bum a zig zag off MGMT in the lift line.

After Checking-In to the hill on Facebook (unless you’re friends with your boss – a rookie mistake for a plethora of reasons, and deserving of getting snapped); checking said Check-In to see how many people “Like” this / how many people are bitter and twisted enough about they’re own lack of spontaneity they comment something to the effect of where is the dislike button / how many people (of the legend variety) say me too. In case you aren’t quite satisfied you’re riding on a school day, you now use this opportunity to remind everyone you have an IPhone, by uploading some photos. In reminding yourself, you might now hop up Maslow’s next step. You should probably have a beer, or a shot, with lunch, to confirm this. You probably were doing that anyway.

At the end of the day, if you’re in NZ you’ll be trekking to the car, which will be covered in a give-away amount of volcanic muddy garbage that will define you to inner-city drivers as cool and one who does cool shit, but also carries the risk of outing your weekday antics – the element of thrill you most likely thrive on. You’ll drive back through wilderness you’d expect Edward Cullen to animorph out off, and you’ll need a bucket of Red Bull from the servo to get home in one piece. You’ll unpack the car, only because your gear is so slick its 98% likely any passer-by, thief or not, will steal it. There is a snowman’s hope in hell you’ll deal with washing of it for at least a week. And you’ll rest feeling you’ve used your body. As opposed to that usual feeling that your body has been used.