The Unfriendliest Way Down

Whoeever likes skiing raise your hand. Now picture me with both arms woodenly attached to my sides.

I have tried -- no one can say I haven't -- to embrace the ski life. I have given it a better shot probably than most people I know who were forced later in life onto two rapidly gliding, skinny, unbalanced boards. I have taken lessons, signed on for a season-long "adult" learn-to-ski program. I have skied in an ungainly fashion down easy trails,hard trails and trails that shouldn't be called trails. I have skied on ice and through moguls (looking like the most hideous of dorks along the way).

And still I approach ski mountains with a level of apprehension that dictates I cannot properly call myself a skier, even after 10 years of working at it. I say, instead, "I ski," which can be interpreted in a number of different ways.

This is the way it should be interpreted: I like to "ski" at 28 degrees Fahrenheit, with no wind, and no ice upon packed courderoy-like powder. But I don't live in Utah, I live in New England, where one person's "trail" is another person's icy promontory that only someone who is suicidal would attempt to glide down upon 160 cm carbon-Kevlar boards. So to make up for the wind, the ice and the mind and bone-numbing cold that permeates my winter digs at Sugarloaf, USA oh, let's say, for about 14 of the 16 ski-worthy weeks of the year, all I ask is to be left alone with my courderoy.

Any real "skier", however, will tell you that to ski down a groomed trail at 8:30 a.m. when everyone else is still having coffee, pulling on their balaclavas and affixing their toe warmers to their socks? Any "real" skier will scoff that this is not, in fact, skiing. Skiing, they say, is something that is performed on hard pack over or around the giant moguls that pile up after a long, hard snow or it is something that happens among tightly packed trees.

These are the same people who were bundled up by their motivated middle- to upper-income parents and transported off to ski, if not each weekend, then at least several times a season of each year.

Because here are two hard,cold facts about skiing. You must have a reasonable cash flow to afford it. And you must start when you are very young --two or three is good, in the womb is better; there's something about about that fluid side to side motion that prepares the fetus for ice and moguls. Sadly, most of us have no control over whether our mothers decided to take a few runs while we were gestating. But you do. All you pregnant women out there, take this as a call to arms: Go ski! Just watch out for the trees.

Cash-wise, mid-life is a good time for picking up the sport. But trying to learn to ski at this point is (prepare for understatement) challenging. There are the little issues of fear and gravity that persistly interfere with accomplishment, i.e., one fears the gravity that threatens at all moments to propel one into those pesky trees or that causes one to lose control while traveling at alarming speeds, resulting in broken and otherwise mangled limbs, ligaments and/or heads. All one has to do, when justifying one's skiing to a "real" expert skier, is explain about the late-in-life adoption of the sport. He or she will nod sadly, sigh and say, "Ah." One need say no more.

Beyond cash flow, fear and gravity lies even worse scariness: the "fake" expert skier. I am speaking specifically about the zillions of boneheaded individuals who think they are so great...and so very fast. In no other sport are people (mainly men) consistenly deluded into thinking they are talented, when in fact they are pinheads who should have their skis confiscated permanently. We've all seen them, skiing 60 miles per hour with arms swingly wildly akimbo, legs flying out from under them (but skis firmly attached since they have told the guy at the ski shop that they are "experts" and their bindings are cranked up tighter than Joan Rivers's face). If I can't kill myself, there are any number of these idiots who will do the job for me. No, people don't give up skiing for being bad at it. I am a case in point. But at least the only thing endangered by my skiing is my own ego.

"Why," my irritated husband and children ask me, "are you always looking behind you?" They think this is bush-league. I think it is life preserving.

My friend Robin, whose family also likes the sport, has permanently given skiing up in favor of reading books and periodicals by a fire. How lovely does that sound? But I'm a victim of my own stubborn will and, as such, I refuse to give it up. I will take my ski medicine until the day I die (hopefully of natural causes). Why I have chosen this path I cannot explain, since, contrary to what is cheerily imprinted on trails with a green circle (beginner) and a smiley face, I'm here to report there is no friendly way down.

Comments

[debbie]

There may be no friendly way down but I can't wait to ski with you at SL this winter!!! I'll roll down the hill if I have to!

[Bad Home Cook]

What is a mogul? We have moguls in Los Angeles, but something tells me you're not talking about that kind of mogul. In general you don't have to avoid them because they're on the toll roads...