I've always loved winter. Sledding. Snowmen. Snowball fights. The silence of a snowy woods...
But I've never understood the allure of strapping boards to one's feet and hurling oneself off of a mountain. That is to say, downhill skiing.
Please understand, it's not for lack of trying. It might, however, be a lack of coordination on my part. And, perhaps, some scars I acquired on my first attempt.
I was about 14 years old, and one of my two best friends in the world, Donna, invited me back home to Pennsylvania to spend a weekend hanging out, part of which involved a trip to a local ski run. I'd been living in Michigan for a couple of years, having moved when my father was transferred there, and I missed my old friends. I jumped at the chance to spend time with Donna.
Naturally, I needed to be outfitted. We didn't do a lot of sledding in Michigan, as it required driving somewhere to find a hill, so I didn't have snow clothes. I, of course, gravitated toward the "ski bunny" look: Short coat, matching ski pants, coordinating hat and mittens. My adolescent brain had me convinced that, in such an outfit, I would meet the man of my dreams on the slopes (Donny Osmond? David Cassidy!?), and he would whisk me away to his (undoubtedly uber-groovy) ski chalet, where we would live happily ever after. *sigh*
Because that is how female adolescent brains think.
Parental brains, however, have entirely different agendas -- not to mention budgets -- so when I hit the slopes, it was in a blue snowmobile suit that resembled some kind of bizarre quilted spacesuit. But it promised to be warm, as it was a single piece that zipped up the front, so no snow would get in at the waist between coat and pants, and it was made of rip-stop nylon that repelled wind. Nothing -- and I mean nothing -- would be getting into that suit. (Sorry, Donny!) Not that anything would want to. The snowmobile suit hid every feminine attribute I had. Which wasn't many to begin with.
When we arrived at the ski run, I was intimidated. I was afraid of heights, for one thing, and mountains (oddly) are high. And the sheer number of skiers zipping around made me nervous. But Donna "tut-tutted" my suggestion that I start on the bunny-hills and promised she would tell me everything I needed to know about skiing. She, after all, had taken to it right away, with very little instruction. Not wanting to look like a wimp (a mistake I commonly made when hanging out with Donna), I let her show me a few moves, and off we went.
On a ski-lift. In case you've never had the experience, lift "chairs" resemble a couple of poles held together by some wire and a few loose boards to (kind of) rest your tush on while you swung wildly in the wind about a mile from the ground, threatening to interfere with air traffic and the occasional UFO. Intimidation became terror.
One of the more challenging dynamics of doing things with Donna was that she tended to leave a step or two out of most of her instructions. Usually, they were things she believed were somehow "intuitive." The results of these ommissions generally left me so traumatized that I'd forget afterwards that they ever occurred. Kind of like the amnesia most women experience after enduring child-birth, which, I'm led to believe, is why there are those of us who have brothers and sisters.
The missing step in this particular set of procedures involved how to get off of the ski lift gracefully. When we got to the top of the mountain, Donna suddenly was no longer beside me on the "chair," and I was heading around the turn and back down the mountain. Donna saw what had happened and started yelling, "Jump!" I feel certain there were other people offering saner advice, but Donna's was the only voice I heard in my panic.
So I jumped. And encountered the ski conditions.
That particular winter had been somewhat warm, so while the snow was still deep, it had melted a little at the top of the mountain where there was little tree cover, and the melted snow had refrozen into a sheet of ice. For more experienced skiers, this wouldn't have been much of a problem, as there just enough snow covering the ice to give them something for their skis to bite into and get them over the perilous ice-patch. I, on the other hand -- falling from an estimated height of three stories (or several feet, in any case) -- didn't stand the merest chance of landing on my feet, much less shushing skillfully away down the run.
I splatted, skis, poles, and body parts all flying in different directions.
Then I discovered the snowmobile suit's Secret Functionality. One-piece construction + slippery nylon fabric = no drag whatsoever. I shot down the slope like a greased seal fired from a cannon.
Luckily, in addition to my ingenious Space Suit of Death, I had a sophisticated braking system, known as My Head, which I cleverly activated on the nearest concrete ski-lift support, several hundred yards from where I'd originally made my landing.
Most of the details after that are a bit foggy. The Ski Patrol guy was definitely very cute, much to my teenaged dismay. I might have wept. I might have called him "Donny" at least once. I might even have begged him for a kiss in between worried discussions taking place around me about the possibility concussions and spine damage.
Only one thing is certain: I'm not living in a ski chalet, groovy or otherwise. And I never wore that snowmobile suit for skiing again.
But there was this one time we went sledding...
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