Skiing- Victory!

            Been following my skiing saga?  Well guess what!  The saying holds true: Third time’s a charm.  We went skiing again and, despite our weather curse, we had a great time.  In my mind, we would ski on a beautiful, sunny day and would swoosh down the slopes basking in nature’s glory.  In reality, there were clouds and sleet fogging our goggles and making the back of my coat fuse to the metal on the chair lift.  But maybe all this bad weather is honing our skills?

            This time, wait for it, no one went insane.  We all enjoyed ourselves with only some minor despair over being cold, wet and tired.  (And from the one kid who hadn’t freaked out on our other trips.  So it was past due and relieved by a food break.)  I started to see what my husband had been envisioning when he started this whole skiing thing: a great family activity.  As opposed to what I had been seeing: a lot of packing, bundling and crying.  I have drunken the kool aid.  (<--Bad grammar, I know.)

            We swooshed along together.  Sharing falls and laughs and death defying near misses. (In our imaginations; you always have to embellish!)  It really was fun.  And despite only having skied a few times myself, I was getting better.  Still doing a lot of snow plowing but hardly falling!  (Now they call snow plowing the “pizza pie” and parallel skis “french fries”.  Easier to explain to the kiddies but highlighting America's fast food problem?  Why not “pita wedge” and “carrot sticks”?  But I digress…)

            I also gave up my ski poles on that weekend trip and now ski without them!  Impressed?  Don’t be.  It is sooo much easier without them.  I’m going to try and give you a mental image of what I look like when I ski:  I ski like a full body seizure.  I see people gliding down the mountain looking effortlessly graceful and athletic.  I need every muscle in my body contracting and releasing hundreds of time each second just to stay upright.  Imagine the start and stop of a tango on high speed with none of the grace.  Or Lurch in a full body flail. Now imagine two really long, pointy sticks being introduced into the mix.  It’s much better for everyone on the mountain if I am not armed. 

            The last time I skied, I was thinking about what a pain it is to carry them around.  They are useful when you need to push along a flat bit and helped stop me from drifting in the lift line.  But coming down the mountain?  They hung, useless, at my sides or dragging behind me.  I realized that many of the times I fell, I was tripping myself with them.  (No, I really can’t answer how I managed to get them in front of me and between me legs.  It’s a scientific mystery.)  And I have a hard enough time getting on and off the lift without taking down everyone around me.  Add the poles and it’s a recipe for disaster. I decided maybe it would be better for the skiing populace if I tried to go pole-less.  (Maybe strippers should try to go pole-less too.  No?)

            So, I parked my poles in a rack and looked around.  Almost all the grownups had poles but it didn’t look like they really did much with them.  Most of the kids don’t seem to use poles anymore and there were all these newborns in ski school zipping down the mountains with no poles.  I have a college degree; surely I could figure it out!  But then again, I can’t tell you how my poles got in front of me to trip me up…

            It was oddly scary to think about not using poles.  I was afraid of falling and not having them to help me up.  And even though I knew they weren’t doing me any good, they were almost like a security blanket. I was beginning to think I should hold something in each hand to trick myself that I had them.  Like Bob Dole and his pen?  But those are pointy.  Two bananas?  Too weird.  Should I just tear the grips off the poles and carry those?  In the end, I decided to be brave and go it alone.

            Ahhh, it’s hard to believe how much easier it is for me to only have two appendages dealing with things that can make me fall down.  I have no idea what I look like coming down the mountain.  I probably am comically holding my arms in the same positions as when I did have poles.  But maybe I look better.  I’m sure that the poles drew attention to my arms, pin wheeling at a high rate of speed, as I twitched downhill.  I am going to go with the “looking better”.  Maybe I even graceful?  Hahahahaha!  Not a chance but I am happy if I don’t look like I need medical attention for an ongoing stroke!