Editor's note: We realize that skiing and cycling are different... sort of. But they're both activities we love and, well, we thought that perhaps by putting a little ski-related something in the magazine, it would help bring us a good winter. This is our superstitious snow dance.

1. Your chances of being menaced by poisonous frogs are greater than your chances of sitting next to a skilled conversationalist on a chairlift.
While there are certainly exceptions, most of us end up on chairlifts with people who either stare at their skis without muttering a word, or who want to talk about the weather. "Wish we had more snow, there's usually twice as much this time of year," is a common refrain, to which I usually reply, "I wish we were half as tall." Perhaps I am one of the reasons why most people just stare silently at their skis.

To encourage chairlift repartee, I suggest that, instead of lining up according to the number in our party, we should be queued with people who share our interests. For example, there could be lines for silent types, lines for appreciators of puns, and lines for snowboarding existentialists"--or even better, combinations thereof. After all, who wouldn't jump at a chance to ride up the hill with a pun-loving, Sartre-quoting, ennui-suffering snowbrooder?

2. Talking about the chairlift will not make you interesting.
Many topics make for great piste-side prattle, but technical chairlift trivia isn't one of them. Lines such as, "This is a Garaventa CTEC lift capable of moving 2400 people per hour," just don't impress like they ought to. For some reason, people will tolerate slope-side soliloquies about the weather, but try informing them that chairlifts with an uphill power unit are more efficient than chairlifts with a downhill power unit, and you might as well just have told them you have a rare but highly contagious face tumor (such a thing exists, just ask the poor Tasmanian Devil.)

It's not that chairlifts can't be compelling subject matter. It's just that the information isn't presented in a compelling way. But chairlift manufacturers can change this by equipping their lifts with electronic scoreboards. For instance, one measurement that would be perfect for public display is efficiency. Contrary to what you'd think, when a lift runs faster, it's efficiency usually decreases as we mere humans start piling up like cars in a Portland ice storm. But if efficiency information were publicly displayed, lift-riding itself could become a sport as we would then have the feedback required to hone our ability to load and unload at ever increasing rates of speed. And lines like, "I rode a lift at 98% efficiency yesterday," might actually help you sound cool.

3. Chairlifts corrupt otherwise good people by granting them an anonymous and astonishing sense of self worth.
I think it has something to do with the height. I avoid skiing under the lift line like I avoid talking to people with communicable face tumors because, no matter how skilfully you ski, someone (usually many) will laugh at you, call you names, and even spit at you as you go by. Snowboarders (at least the ones who refuse to appreciate puns) will knock snow from their boards the second you ski under them. I am certain they are all good people. But if you put good people on pedestals, they'll boast first of your wisdom, then your stupidity. The towers of a chairlift are such a pedestal.

The solution is simple. Dig a big trench up the mountain and put the chairlift in it. The trench should be dug deep enough so that the chairs ride at ground level--within reach of retaliatory snowballs and epithets. Chairlift riders, deprived of their elevation-induced senses of self worth, and subject to retribution, will be free to display the good manners that they'd wanted to display all along. And for those whose inflated sense of self worth is an inherent condition, their new-found vulnerability will at least encourage them to maximize lift-riding efficiency.