"When it comes to skiing, there's a difference between what you think it's going to be like, what it's really like, and what you tell your friends it was like."
~Author Unknown
Ah, skiing. The soft, white snow capping the majestic mountaintops. The whispering swish in the air all that meets your ears as you glide gracefully down the slopes in an elegant dance with nature. Hot chocolate in the lodge to warm you from the inside out. Pink cheeks and eyes sparkling with laughter.
That's Colby's experience on the mountain. Mine goes more like this:
Strap on one ski, fall over multiple times while attempting to strap on the other. Huff and puff, sweating profusely while laboriously side-stepping up the side of a small hill. Position skis carefully to begin slow descent down the fifteen degree incline, begin crying halfway down when I realize I don't know how to stop and so fall squarely on my ass, to avoid hurtling into the class of snowboarders five feet from the bottom of the hill.
In short, this girl is not so much a fan of the skiing. For years I heard about people who would go on these mysterious "skiing trips" over the Christmas or Mardi Gras holidays. I'm sure that these people really did exist and maybe they even had fun, but I never knew anyone that had actually been skiing aside from my mother, and her resulting multiple knee surgeries didn't exactly spark my interest.
When Colby moved to Washington, he would call me in the evenings after weekends spent on the slopes, enthusing about how great it was, and how much fun it would be when I could go skiing with him. When I moved up here, one of our first tasks was to outfit me with the proper ski gear. To Colby, that meant a jacket, pants, goggles, and gloves that would keep me warm and protected from the elements. To me, that meant another pink jacket added to my collection, and a really adorable pair of puffy white pants.
The clothes were tucked away in the back of the closet for a few months, and then the Christmas holidays rolled around, and Colby, with the joy of a child in his eyes, suggested that we take a day to go skiing. I was excited about breaking in my cute new ski pants, so I agreed and before I knew it, the alarm was going off at six o'clock in the morning on D-Day, I mean, ski-day.
Everything went great up until the point that I had to wave Colby off as I got dropped off at my first time ski lessons and Colby went to hit the slopes. As soon as he said goodbye, tears sprung into my eyes, and I suddenly remembered EXACTLY what it felt like when I was dropped off at school for the first time and had to watch my mom walk away. I lost every shred of my dignity, and practically begged him to let me go back inside and read my book.
He calmed me down, told me I really should at least give it a try, and at some point rational thought kicked back in and I agreed that it would be silly to have spent all of this money and then quit before I'd even tumbled down the hill once.
So, with a bracing hug, Colby wandered off to slide down some mountains, and I pasted a smile on my face and joined my class. A class that was labeled "First Time Skiers", but actually turned out to be "Refresher Class for Everyone Except Angela and an Equally Terrified Nine-Year-Old Girl". After a brief explanation of how to put on our skis, we all formed a line and then glided around in a circle, some (read: everyone else) a little more successfully than others (read: me and the nine-year-old). I fell down a few times, once completely unable to get back up again without the assistance of two grown men, one to yank on my arm, and the other to keep my bastard skis from willfully sliding out from under me again.
Just as I was started to get the hang of how to remain upright on flat ground, our instructor had us side-step up the small hill to begin careening downward. Trouble was, he'd not really gone into any detail as to how one should actually SKI, because apparently, we were not going at the pace of the slowest learners in the class. Whatever happened to No Child Left Behind, I ask you!
Anyway, I slowly ascended the hill with great effort and exhaustion, and upon reaching the top, looked down the tiny slope and was immediately slapped in the face with my crippling fear of heights. My phobia is an incredibly difficult thing to pin down. I'm absolutely terrified of fire escapes, platforms more than three feet off the ground, and the prospect of bungee jumping, but I'm totally cool with roller coasters and airplanes. So, I never really know when my fear of heights is going to kick in and totally debilitate me.
And so, of course it did so just as I began awkwardly sliding down the hill. I was partially blinded by my tears, my arms were windmilling furiously since our poles had been confiscated at the beginning of the lesson, and my skis were skidding hither, thither, and yon across the icy snow as I rapidly picked up speed. Of course, our instructor hadn't gone over that crucial Stopping Lesson, and so I martyred myself so as not to take out the adorable five-year-old boy snowboarding effortlessly, directly into my trajectory.
It was at this point that I realized that skiing is decidedly NOT FUN, but apparently I was in a class with a bunch of losers who don't believe in quitting. So I was hauled bodily back up the side of the hill, to repeat my catastrophic descent multiple times. No one ever told me exactly what I was doing wrong other than to point out that I shouldn't cross my skis. But then when I was going downhill they would tell me to form a "V" to slow down, at which point, I am sorry, but my skis are GOING to cross, ASSHOLE.
Eventually, the instructor has the brilliant idea that he'll take off his skis, wrap his arms around my waist and walk behind me as I skid down the hill. But since I still couldn't really grasp the concept behind slowing down, and now I had a man hanging from my back, we ended up in a pile of arms and legs, halfway down the hill. I think I broke his elbow or something, and he left me alone after that.
At some point, when I was standing at the bottom of the hill, stewing silently, my little nine-year-old friend literally somersaulted down the hill, landing at my feet. I handed her the little pink hat that had flown from her poor head, offered up an understanding smile, and then said to myself, "Eff this noise, I'm out". Our instructor arranged for me and Pink Hat to go over with another first time skier class, one that was apparently actually made up of first time skiers, but since I didn't have Pink Hat's whip wielding parents hovering over my shoulder, shooting me encouraging looks and insisting with a will of iron that "SKIING IS FUN!", I hauled my poor bruised body back inside and turned in my skis.
And that was my introduction to the sport of skiing. I hated every second of it, but Colby loves it, so because I LOVE HIM, I have promised him that next year I will try again. On Saturday, he went skiing with some friends, and I know he would have liked me to come along, but not enough time has passed yet to dull the painful memory of that horrible experience. So, I opted to stay home and watch a lot of crappy tv and work on thank you notes some more.
We both had a really great Saturday, he got to ski, I managed to spend the day without developing any tears or new bruises, and it ended with dinner at our favorite Greek restaurant. Now I'll just be spending the next nine months praying for a freak snow-less winter. I'm not terribly optimistic about my chances.