Watch these closure times!

Every interconnected lift network has a requirement of closing time with clear consequences. If you miss it, you generally have no other choice but going back to your car or your home via bus or taxi.

That had never happened to me, until my daughter and I were forced to experience it this past Friday. For some reasons, I lost track of time (who wouldn't when ski is so fun).

In spite of realizing too late that we would miss our connection, and skiing like bats out hell to get to the gondola that connects The Canyons to Park City, we missed closure time by one measly minute, which sucks, but is well part of life and its silly rules.

We then had no choice to ski down the bottom of The Canyons and wait for the bus that would take us back to the Park City base area where my car was parked.

This was our first time riding one the new all-electric buses the transit system just acquired, and while we were lucky to find two seats as we were all squeezed like sardines in that enormous tin-can, it took us seemingly forever to get to our destination through the awful holiday traffic we in Park City call “carmageddon” to borrow a word from traffic-crazy California .

When we finally got to the bus stop, not only did we have to put ours skis back on and glide down to the parking lot where our car was waiting for us, but also extracting ourselves from that ungodly place.

Getting out of the parking area at 5 pm was all but impossible and we thought we'd be stuck all night in that huge traffic jam.

The morale of this lesson is that I won't miss the last gondola ever!