Shane McConkey's Brainchild: The Volant Spatula

It started with me having dinner by myself at a Chinese place in Squaw. I had already paid for the meal and chilled out for a while when I got hungry again. Just then Shane McConkey walked into the dining room. I asked the nice, high school waitress for some hamachi as a closer. She looked at me like I was nuts; as if to say 'how the hell can I get you sushi? You're in a Chinese place.' Shane came over and told her he wanted some too, so she giddily smiled and ran off to find us some fish. I asked him what the dimensions were of his latest brainchild and the subject of my next column, the Volant Spatula, to which he replied, "125, 180, 125," numbers so absurd that this must have been a dream. The hamachi came and the waitress was doing her best older-man flirt with him, her most-regular customer who merely had to sign his name on the tab to get whatever the hell he fancied.

The next thing I knew it was summer and I was at the bottom of Chicken Bowl (below the Palisades) and he was on top of Extra Chute. Suddenly he leaped off the edge and spun off three smooth front flips. Just when I thought he was about to splat all over the chaff below, out came a little pond for him to land into, perfectly of course.

Then we were back at his place and a friend of mine asked if it took a huge spring to make it to the water's edge. "No it's not so much the spring as it is the un-weighing of yourself. Like your arms - 150 pounds in each one" he said while smirking and motioning to kiss each one like Hulk Hogan did his 19 inch pythons.

We talked about the Spatulas some more which led him off on tangents about other skis he'd designed, like the Machetes and how they were perfect for this and that condition. Laughing, he shot off one last volley about something that no one understood, at least not me, and walked back into his house.

Of course that was all a dream - strange things happen when you sleep through a deadline. But the funny thing is that there are real reasons that I had it in the first place. The most significant being Shane's persona and a few recent run-ins with the guy.

Like watching him do huge backflips off of Extra in mid-February (a friend in Ski Patrol said Shane repeated it seven times in a row that day). And hearing about him getting a snowmachine handlebar smushed into his leg making a hematoma so nasty that he had to be cut so the doctor could squeeze it from between his thigh muscles with his bare hands. And seeing the 1970's long-jumping waterskis that he mounted with Marker bindings for his next Alaska trip: "I can't wait to see the guide's face when I tell him to load these suckers!" And finally it probably had something to do with his 5-page stream of consciousness that comes with every pair of Spatulas entitled 'Brain Floss.' The Chinese food and sushi probably need to be filed under 'deep id filler pile' - that place which helps make dreams completely nonsensical.

The reality of these new skis is that they are such a twist of logic that thousands of people who try them will undoubtedly be led into some funky dreams as well. The skis have REVERSE sidecut and REVERSE camber, just like surfboards…or waterskis. If you load pressure on the downhill edge it will go downhill and away from you - exactly the opposite of what all other skis do. You are not supposed to carve the ski but rather float it, or slide diagonally across the fall line. You can lean forward in the pow to increase your speed, then stand up a bit and let them slide you into your next 'turn.' You can personhandle any 'stomping' situation because the Spatulas are so wide underfoot that you won't punch through the snow as far as you are used to. Put simply, the Spatulas are Future Skis.

They are borne of a hyper-creative person who clearly understands better than most of us all things skiing, falling and floating. It takes faith to carry their seemingly snapped and broken shape to the lift for the first time but after getting the feel for even just one run, you'll go begging for the right to buy a pair.

To quote the closing of 'Brain Floss', "Have fun on your new Spatulas! And remember, if someone makes fun of them, there are no friends on a powder day! You don't have to wait for their slow ass! Good luck!"

This week's ticket giveaway (a pair for Squaw Valley) goes to the first person who can tell WD what the graphic is on the shovel of the Spatula. Use these tickets any day but maybe save them for the 2nd Annual Pain McShlonkey mutated ski event at Squaw on April 27. Email your answer to alexwest21@hotmail.com.

Alex West is a freelance paver, writer, Promo Ho and photographer who wants to drink from the Fountain of Youth, i.e. own a pair of Spatulas. He thinks that whoever does the Cushing Crossing on a pair of them will take home 1st Place. His goal is to become a resort vagabond chronicling a Tahoe ski season in this column.