Monday, November 23, 2009

Skiing

I knew when we moved to Colorado we'd be doing a lot more "outdoorsy" stuff. It was one of the reasons that I wanted to move there. Well, mainly for the hiking.

What I found out is that, people in Colorado are like outdoor extremists. They do everything. And they do everything well. It's not just good enough to hike. They hike, and bike, and run the hikes. They downhill ski, and nordic ski, and snowshoe. They climb rocks, and mountains, and glaciers. You name it. They do it. Me, I just like to hike. Now my husband ... he wants to do all of that other stuff as well. On the same day. Better than anyone else.

Last year we skied once. It was nice (and freezing) and I was perfectly satisfied with that. But Charlie wanted to get season passes this year and be one of those people that wakes up at 5 am on a Saturday to beat everyone else to the mountain. I like my sleep. So the great debate about passes began. Charlie was definitely getting a pass, but I was leaning towards a 4-pass. Sounded nice. 4 times. no pressure to ski more. And then I found out that there are blackout dates on the 4-pass and that as a student I get an awesome deal on a season pass. So I became a season pass holder.

Now I have to be honest. Skiing scares me. And when people are already dying on some blue trails in November I get even more scared.

Last weekend we went to Winter Park for our first skiing of the '09-'10 season. It was fine at first (remember we were the first freaking people on the mountain.) But after a few hours it got really icy. Probably because there were so many people. There were only 2 runs open. And all of their snow was blown snow. Anyway, around 2 I told Charlie that I wanted to head out. Because of the ice and me being a wuss. He wanted one more run. So we went up for the last time. And on our way down I fell. Which is really not surprising because I do that a lot. But this time I was going pretty fast and I hit a huge patch of ice. And I'm not kidding when I say that I slid down half the run on my back, did a backwards summersault, slid down some more on my face, and then finally rolled to a stop. When I finally recovered from my epic fall and crawled down the rest of the run, I found Charlie who asked me if I was crying, because my face was covered in snow. No dammit, I'm not crying I'm pissed.

I told Charlie that our Christmas presents to each other were going to be helmets this year. Because I'm only 26. And maybe wearing a helmet will make me less of a wuss. Maybe.

Ski Bums
This was before I was covered in snow and ice.

2 comments:

Alex said...

hahaha. Good job getting down the mountain! It's always the last run that gets you. Both Dan and I have helmets - definitely worth it. How else are you going to become an expert skier??

Anonymous said...

wow. scary. but now you have a good story--- and a helmet always presents an excellent opportunity for decorative use of stickers- and we all know that doesnt happen often enough :)