Skiing!

The Reason We All Live Here

Some real snow fell this week and I decided that the time for me to start skiing was long overdo, so I wake up early on Thursday morning (well, before 9 am), dig out my ski gear, and stumble out the door.

On the bus, I'm strangely nervous.  

Vail's a huge mountain. What if I get lost?

Here's a tip a good friend told me:

In the event of getting lost on the mountain, 

 Ski downhill

My doubts are assuaged.

I jump into the Gondola, crying, “Good morning!” to the guys on the opposite bench, ready for a cheerful conversation on run conditions.

No answer.

They presumably do not speak english. That's fine because I know I will soon be looking at a scene that, though familiar, will make my jaw drop and cause a sigh to escape my lips.

At some point this fall I had forgotten the top of the mountain, but now I remember. THIS is why I live here, because any day I like, I can strap myself into rigid plastic boots that make my toes go numb, clip those into two long sticks, and throw myself into this:

Sigh.

At MidVail, I clip into my skis and slide over to Chair 4.

I skip past the layers of people waiting by strolling through the singles line and end up on the lift with a couple from Connecticut.

“Oh, I live here,” I tell them. No big deal. “I think I'm gonna go find some bumps, you know, to warm-up a bit.”

They are impressed.

And jealous.

Unfortunately, I'm a little too confident getting off the lift and accidentally ski over a bright orange and entirely visible cone and were it not for some excellent one-foot acrabatics, would have fallen on my arse directly in front of the chairlift. The couple from Connecticut skis around me.

 Er...I meant to do that.

"You got this," I chant to myself and start down the hill. I'm making some turns, feeling my edges, staying upright. Then I get to the bumps. Suddenly, I'm actually going fast so I skid to a stop. I pretend to look back uphill as though I'm waiting for someone. Really I'm just trying to catch my breath and slow down my speed so that I'm not really skiing, but jump sliding down the hill with limited style.

At least I am warm. Sweating in fact.

Halfway down the hill, I pause and look around. The only other skiier on the run is a gentleman in gray. He's obviously suffering, more than me. Confident local attitude now gone, I decide to go for the friendly gaper, 

"This altitude sure gets ya doesn't it!?" I shout at him, as though I haven't spent the last 12 months in Vail adjusting to 8,000 feet.

He ignores me. I pizza, french fry down to the lift.

I wait patiently in the singles line, ready for another go, though slightly bewildered: turns out, running and practicing yoga all summer did NOT automatically turn me into a great skier.

Isn't that odd?