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I chose to attend Cal Poly San Luis Obispo for college, and I was walking in front of the Student Union early in my first term when I saw three ski patrollers sitting together on a bench. They were all dressed in knit hats and goggles, and looked sharp in their matching rust-colored jackets. Nothing unusual about that, of course, except that it was a warm October day on the central California coast, a place where it never snows in October. And these were ski patrollers.