The ‘Babushka Incident’ At The Yodler
So we were at the Yoldler on Mammoth Mountain, at the time one of the most fun ski apes bars in the world (alas, now, it’s slid downhill, so to speak, since they built the Village) when a friend slid his hand up the shapely rear end of someone in our group while she was standing at the bar waiting to get a drink.
Now I could tell from skiing earlier in the day this girl was not the kind of woman that you want to cross. I sensed she had pent-up anger inside of her and it would not take much for it to come out like an erupting volcano. In fact, I nicknamed her (privately) Nitroglycerin, because she could explode at any time. In the group, I just called her Babushka because she skied while wearing one of those Russian hats.
My friend kept sliding his hand up Babushka’s body and I grabbed another friend by the shirt and told him to stand back, for Babushka was about to smack and fling the guy all across the bar, and I did not want him to collide with me and spill my drink.
Sure enough, that friend reached up and honked Babushka. Right on the breast. I took a deep breath and…
…Nothing happened. Babushka did not make a move.
However, erupting volcanos need time to build up the lava. And that night, coming home from the bars, the offending friend noticed a bunch of ski clothes tossed out from the condo and onto the snow. “Ha, ha, look at that loser,” he chuckled. “What a loser. What a lose… er wait a minute those are my ski pants. And that’s my jacket!”
Well I could hardly hold in the laughing and sensing a raging bull inside ready to greet him, I escaped to my condo. And sure enough, Babushka had gone into full explosive mode. She was screaming and tossing the guy’s clothes all over the place.
He deserved it, of course. And a lot worse. I just couldn’t believe it took that long to happen. That girl has one delayed fuse!
Turns out, after later discussing it with her girlfriends after the ashes subsided and the lava quit flowing, Babushka had a bad night at the bars and used the Yodler incident as her explosive charge to rail against men.
These days, of course, there would be charges of sexual harassment, the Yodler would get sued and it would have ended ugly. Believe me, I’m certainly not taking the sexual harassment issue lightly and women have every right to be protected from it, but in this case the offender was punished for his action. He had to endure his wrath, plus his clothes were all wet. I could not think of better punishment.
I’m writing about this because President’s Day Weekend is coming and I’m thinking back on some of the more entertaining memories of those trips we used to take from L.A. We had as many as 30 people on those adventures and to “reserve” seats at the Yodler, had designated “table bitches” who would hold spots while we finished up our runs on the slopes.
At the Yodler, we would drink, sing along with the band and some girls would even stand on the table as if they were in the Greek Islands.
Then we would go back to the condo, have more drinks in the Jacuzzi, eat dinner and then go out to the bars.
The Babushka incident is just one of the stories to come out of that trip. In the end she was fine with it and even laughed about it later. And the offending friend? He never laid another finger on Babushka.
Cheers!
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