As the snow melts and final exams are taken, a wind blows into ski towns across America that is both sultry and ironic. On the steamy horizon, undergraduates drive across Kansas and Nebraska and before you know it—The 90-Day Wonders arrive in ski towns across the Rockies.
A 90-Day Wonder is a summer visitor—a passerby, who works in a ski town for three months, 90 days, and returns to college or a career.
The irony is that people who typically move to ski towns, tend to move for the skiing. But not the 90-Day Wonder. The 90-Day Wonder migrates to the mountains in the summertime, when there is no skiing. They revel in jobs at dude ranches, where drunken costume parties reign supreme, and work as babysitters in places like Aspen for hedge fund driven families. 90-day Wonders are usually female but not always. While most guys come during the summer but stay for the winter, these ladies arrive for a self-imposed 90-Day allotment before buckling down and getting to work as students, assistant marketing directors, doctors, teachers, or other young professional vocations. With a stable career in mind, these summer sirens come to the mountains to get drunk and break as many hearts as humanly possible. After their 90-day sabbatical, 90-Day Wonders settle down and make exponentially more money than their male ski-bum counterparts.
Normally hailing from states like Georgia, North Carolina, and Alabama (there are a few Northeaster 90-Day Wonders as well), 90-Day Wonders know that the ratio of 8 guys for every 1 lady is good. With the pick of the ski town litter, the 90-day wonder couples up quickly. Vermonter river-guides fall victim to their spells as due shuttle driving Jersey folk, who can’t resist the energy of senior coeds from the University of Alabama.
However 90 days is not a long time and as the summer winds down, after the bars and rivers run dry, the 90-day relationships come to a close. For those that get involved, they end up tired, hung-over, and heartbroken when they hear the words, “it’s time for me to head back home.”
But I must say, I love the 90-Day Wonders. They breathe fresh air into ski towns every summer from across the country and if it weren’t for them, ski bums might forget that there is a world outside our precious ski town oases. Not only that, but in the words of Matthew McConaughey, “I get older and they stay the same age.” So thank you 90-Day wonders. If it weren’t for you, crusty river guides, bartenders, and ski bums waiting for the winter would never get laid.