My recent recollections of trying to be outdoorsy guy triggered another one of those wonderful memories of my past as a relationship chameleon. You would have thought by now that I had learned my lessons about snow-based sports. But no, along comes the psycho and I change my colors once again to fit in.
This time, my big mouth and desire to get laid led me to the slopes of the Cascades. There, I was to try my hand at skiing. Now, I had tried skiing once before, but it was cross-country. Within moments of trying it, I couldn’t see why anyone would want to work so hard to move horizontally across the snow. It was nonsense. I could walk faster.
But downhill skiing, now that seemed a lot easier, in large part because gravity would do a lot of the work for me, sending me on my way with little to no encouragement or exertion.
I, of course, bit off more than I could chew, as I almost always do. So, on a sunny Saturday morning, off we go to Snoqualmie Pass for my first lesson. I didn’t sign up to get instruction from a real professional. No, I opted to let my psycho girlfriend teach me.
My first embarrassment was trying to get up the rope tow on the bunny hill. I thought it would be easy. All the little moppets were zooming right up it. No such luck in my case. After shredding my new ski gloves and doing several incredibly impossible splits on skis, I finally made it to the top of the beginner’s hill. As I stood there, it looked way steeper than it did from down below. How was I going to get off this thing?
As we know, you can’t take a set of stairs off a ski slope. There’s only one way down. Well, two ways. You can go down on your skis or you can go down my way: a face plant or two, then a long slide on my back, back up on the skis, totally out of control, then one last fall, skis flying through the air.
I wasn’t having any fun. My psycho girlfriend could tell. Her solution was some beer. That was her solution for everything. But, we did go inside the lodge and had a couple pitchers of beer and some nachos. Fortified, I was ready to go out and take on the bunny slope again.
It was much easier with the beer, I will tell you. I can see why boda bags are standard issue to all skiers. I made it down the hill, swooshing from side to side while humming, “My Girl”. It works, believe me. I got sunshine, on a cloudy day… Just move the poles with the rhythm and you’ll learn to ski instantly.
I would have been content to stay on the bunny hill for some time. Maybe after a few years I would move up to the Green trails. But psycho girlfriend would have none of that.
She wanted to go to the real slopes.. NOW! I reluctantly tagged along, even though I had only made it down the bunny slope once. Frankly, I should have just feigned injury and went back to the lodge.
I’m not really sure why that in our technologically advanced world, that they haven’t figured out a better way to get a skier from Point A, Base of Hill, to Point B, Top of Hill. I tried my best to get on the ski lift, but they had to stop it momentarily. I could hear the skiers behind me bitching as the lift ground to a stop so I could set my beginner’s ass down on the chair. In the process, I almost shish-kabobbed the lift operator with my wandering pole.
Finally, off we go. I had a mortal fear of heights back then. I certainly wasn’t thrilled to find no seat belt on the chair when I went to buckle up. Inevitably, another beginner couldn’t get on the ski lift either for about halfway up, our chair stopped unexpectedly, and then began to rock back and forth over the top of the jagged rocks below us. Now this is fun, I thought. What a great sport to participate in.
We started back up. As we headed towards the top, psycho girlfriend explains to me what I am supposed to do when it’s time to get off the chair. “Just stand up when I do,” she says, “and ski off the chair and to the left.”
I did as I was told, only I went right. The now empty chair was following me. The operator shut it down again, yelling at me that I was supposed to go left, not right. What he didn’t know was that I was trying to go left, it was the skis that decided to go right. It’s not like the damned things have a steering wheel.
Finally, we made our way to the top of the Green trail. My god, it’s steep. Can’t even imagine what a Double Diamond would look like. I was about to voluntarily head down a cliff on two waxed sticks. Who thought this up, anyway?
It was then that my psycho girlfriend just took off down the hill. She didn’t even wait for me. I guess my lessons for the day were done. There was no other option for me but to follow. I started humming My Girl again. Initially, things were going well. I shooshed right, then left at sharp angles, making my way down the hill ever so slowly.
As I was planning my next turn, a little kid about three years old zipped by me, sans poles, going full bore. He’s not going side to side, but straight down. I momentarily try to call out for a Ski Patrol guy to save this poor, out of control kid. Then I realize that’s the ultimate fun of skiing. Go up to the top, get down to the bottom as fast as you can. No dilly-dallying.
Me? I continued to take the scenic route. It took me about a half hour to make it down. By now, my psycho-girlfriend had passed me by two other times.
Thankfully, my skiing days were numbered. We broke up about two years later. My skis never saw the slopes of the Cascades again. Well, at least not me latched into their binding. However, I did continue to go to the lodge once or twice a year, faking a limp. The snow bunnies took such pity on me, a Double Diamond mishap as I was heading out of bounds, you know. 🙂
Out on the Treasure Coast, where snow is never in the forecast and the skis are water only,
– Robb