The Barracks
A short tale about the Winter Olympics, dog poop and a famous landlord.
Readers of yore may recall that I have a thing about snow sports.
I’ve been watching a lot of the Winter Olympics and, in the super pipe events, I had a strange moment of recognition.
Of one of the coaches.
That was my first clue that the world has moved on. I’m old now. I have reached the age where I recognise the coaches—but not the athletes.
It’s Danny Kass. He’s a coach for the US snowboard teams now. Who would have guessed?
Danny Kass, if you don’t know, won silver in the Salt Lake City games in the superpipe. This was back in 2002, when snowboarding was still a fringe event, an upstart that no one was convinced was going to catch on.
Sitting on my couch, feeling really old, seeing this guy—the ultimate snowboard BRO back in the day—triggered some fond memories.
It also coincides with a gap in The Notebooks—somewhere in between that sun-laced glade with Luke in the summer of 2006 and the car crash—so away we go…
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In January 2008, I boarded the Amtrak Lake Shore Limited out o…
