Ski-Trip

The inherent problem with skis, as I see it, is that they slide just as well backwards as they do forwards, which leaves you entirely dependent on having some previous forward motion to keep you moving in the right direction.  If you don’t have that forward motion, or any means of attaining it, you’re screwed. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know there are supposed to be little techniques that keep you from sliding backwards down a hill, but they all involve clever little tricks you do with your feet, and unfortunately, when I ski, I can’t do clever little foot tricks because someone has very stupidly attached long wooden slats to each of my feet.  Oh, and the other problem with skiing is that it just really sucks.  It's like sledding, only without the sled or the fun.  I really can’t say enough bad things about skiing, but I’m going to try.  Here we go…

So this story is about the one and only ski trip I ever took in my life, and, like most of the stories on this blog, it ends with me looking like an asshole.  I was in grade school, probably grade 7 or 8, and we were going on a class trip to the nearest ski hill.  We started out early in the morning as the nearest ski hill was still quite a ways away.  The driver of the chartered school bus must have been new at her job or something because I remember she was having a hard time with the manual transmission.  She would screw up and miss a gear, or forget the clutch entirely.

"If you can't find 'er, grind 'er", we'd all yell.

Then the bus driver would get all red in the face and look like she was going to cry.  When she stalled it out on a big hill, she made everyone get off the bus because we were laughing so hard at her.  She drove the empty bus to the top of the hill and we had to walk up to re-board.  Then she gave us a big speech about not distracting her while she did her job, but our respect only lasted until she missed another gear.  Anyway, this has nothing to do with skiing, I'm just saying we worked this bus driver over pretty good the whole trip up to the mountain.

We finally got to the ski hill, and were all fitted for our big dumb ski boots and poles and skis while I'm sure the bus driver went someplace for a drink or to cry.  The ski hill people directed us to the Bunny Hill to go through some safety courses and beginner instruction.  Most of our group spent about 30 minutes on the Bunny Hill learning the basics.  I, however, spent most of the day there. 

I practiced and repeatedly failed to master the simplest of skiing techniques.  All of my friends had moved on to other more challenging hills, but I remained on the Bunny Hill with all the 4 year olds because the instructors had told us not to try the bigger hills until we were confident we could turn and stop properly.  I could do neither of these things.  What i could do, was the maneuver where you turn your knees inward and point the tips of your skis toward one another.  This slows you down or even stops you at slower speeds, but I was terrified to use that technique while coming down one of the bigger hills.  My fear was that if I tried it, the high speeds would turn my skis too far inward, twist-breaking the bones in both my ankles, and turning the skis all the way around so it looked like I had put them on backwards.

"Nope, my skis aren’t on backwards, folks, my legs are.  Call an ambulance, please."

I had mental images of me coming down one of the moderate hills like a runaway train, screaming in agony, my skis and legs on backwards, broken bones jutting out of both my legs.  

Maybe that can’t happen, I don’t know, I’m not a fucking doctor.  It was going to be the Bunny Hill for me for the rest of the day.

Now, at the foot of the Bunny Hill was a machine called a "pony-lift" that helped tow people back to the top of the hill.  The pony-lift was essentially a long loop of cable with hard plastic handles attached to it every few feet.  This loop of cable was wound around two pulleys, one at the top of the hill, one at the bottom.  You caught hold of a handle at the bottom of the hill, let the cable take you up the hill, then you let go and let the handle made its way back to the bottom.  It was a pretty slick device, and while the handles moved pretty quickly and gave your shoulders a pretty good jolt when you latched on, it sure beat the hell out of walking back up the hill after each run.

In total, I probably made about 11 runs down the Bunny Hill (I was desperate to better my skills enough to go find my friends on the other hills), but with each run it became harder to hang onto the pony-lift on the way back up.  Eventually, while halfway up the hill, my cold hands, wet mittens, and pathetic upper body strength made it impossible to hold on to the hard plastic handle any longer.  When my hands slipped, I started sliding backwards down the hill.  I slid directly into the person behind me who was also being towed up the hill.  The collision caused them to lose their grip on the handle and as they started to slide backwards, I lost my balance and fell over sideways onto the moving cables.  The sharp-eyed operator, probably having already noticed what a lemon I was, killed the motor on the lift immediately.  The cables stopped abruptly, and my weight caused them to dive towards the ground.  All the way up the hill, handles were being yanked downwards and out of peoples’ hands.  I could feel the cables beneath me vibrate and make a metallic "PUH-TOW" sound each time someone lost their grip.  While I kicked and thrashed on the cables like a fish in a net, all the way up the hill it was mayhem.  People were falling over, sliding backwards, running into one another, yelling for help.  It was awful.

"GODDAMMIT!" I heard the Pony-Lift Man say as he came marching up the hill.

He lifted me up off of the cables and set me on my feet.  He handed me my poles and put the Pony Lift handle in my hand again.

"Hang on to it!" he said ferociously before heading up the hill to help everyone else.

The lift was re-started, and though my arms shook and quivered, I managed to hang on to the handle to the top of the hill.  Once there I decided that maybe it was time to move on to one of the more challenging hills.  Not that I was ready for a bigger challenge skill-wise. God, no, even I knew I was probably leaving the ski hill on a stretcher, but I just couldn't risk pissing off the Pony-Lift Man again.

I found my best friend, and he convinced me to accompany him down one of the intermediate hills.  We made our way to the chair-lift area, and I studied how people were getting on before I got in line.  It looked easy enough, you just positioned yourself and waited for the chair-lift to pick your ass up.  Easy!  I was nervous when it was our turn to get on, but I managed to do it no problem.

The trip up the mountain in the chair-lift was intense.  I have a phobia about heights, so I tried not to look down and just joked around with my buddy.  As we approached the "landing area" though, I realized I couldn't see how people got off of the lift.  I had no example to go off of, I had no idea what to expect!

When our chair came in, I was panicked.  It came in way too fast.  When the bar was lifted I tried to be brave and just jump out, but I immediately faceplanted.  My skis tripped my friend, and the people coming in off the next chair tripped over us.  A pile-up had begun.

Ever been at a ski resort and had the chair-lift stop for no apparent reason.  You're left dangling dangerously high above the ground in the freezing cold air, and after a few minutes someone gets mad enough to yell, "What the fuck is going on?"

Well, I'm what the fuck is going on.

They had to halt the chair-lift to pull apart the puzzle of people and skis I had caused.  When my friend and I were set free, we bolted as quickly as possible because a LOT of people were really unhappy with me.  We tried to find an intermediate trail, but all we could seem to find were the terrifying "Black Diamond" trails for those with advanced skills.  My friend was more confident than I was, but there was no goddamned way I was doing one of those trails.  I told my friend to enjoy his afternoon, then I took off my skis and I started hiking down the black diamond trail on foot.

As I walked down the mountain, the wide trail funneled itself down into a much more narrow passage through the mountain.  I had been walking for a few minutes when I heard a whooshing sound, and felt a blast of wind go by me.  I heard someone say "WHAT THE FU---" before their voice disappeared down the hill. 

It turns out, being relatively stationary in the middle of a narrow black diamond trail isn't very safe. 

I tried to make my way to the edges of the trail, but it was so narrow, and the snow was too deep to walk in at the edges.  I decided to keep walking in the middle of the trail, and I just tried to keep an eye and an ear out for people coming up behind me.  It didn't work very well at all.  They were moving so fast!  More than once I stood there facing down an incoming human missile. 
 
Imagine being an expert skier, coming down a tight trail in the forest, rounding a bend at like 80km/h and coming up on a terrified fat kid standing in the middle of the trail, kind of dancing from side to side, unsure of which direction to dive out of the way.

This happened like three or four times.  I was a nervous wreck all the way down the hill.  By the time I reached the lodge, I had tears in my eyes because I was so emotionally exhausted.  What a shit day, man. 

I sat in the lodge at a table, staring out at the mountain in defeat.  It was almost time for us to leave, and I was just sitting there waiting for my friends to return from the hills when I noticed the bus driver sitting at another table.  She was sipping hot chocolate by herself.

It hadn't occurred to me that this poor woman we had tormented all the way up here had given up her entire day so that we could go skiing.  She had been sitting down in this lodge the whole time.  I started to feel really bad about having teased her about her driving earlier.  I knew what it was like to suck at something.  This woman and I, we had both had rotten days. 

I decided that I would be really nice to her to try and make her day better.  I got up, walked over to her table, and said, "Hey, thanks a lot for bringing us up here today, we really appreciate it."

"Oh," she said, clearly taken aback, "Well, you're very welcome, it was my pleasure."

Feeling awesome about myself, I sat back down and waited until the rest of the class came back to the lodge.  When we boarded the bus, the driver gave me a little smile and she was clearly in a good mood.  Both of our days had been salvaged by a simple act of kindness. 

"All aboard!" she yelled with a smile.  The kids, all in happy moods after a day of fun, laughed good-naturedly at her little joke.  She put the bus into gear, and we started for home.  We hadn't even gotten out of the parking lot when she stalled the bus again.  It was a pretty bonehead move on her part, so we gave her shit for it the whole way home.