Skiing, Part 2

So after 14 happy years of living in Colorado, I finally tried skiing.

In some ways I really had the red carpet rolled out for me, so I'd be an idiot not to give it a shot. On the other hand, there seemed to be annoyance, discomfort, pain and fear in abundance, and the responses I got were always a shrug, "That's skiing. You just get used to it."

Nobody says that kind of stuff about reading books.

I went to Winter Park for two days, which is a very kid friendly place, and seeing all these tiny tots made me feel so excited for Ada and Logan, and how fortunate they are to grow up with this in their backyard. So I gave it the old college try.

Saturday I took an all day group lesson. The first half was no problem, I was relatively comfortable. The second half of the day we got on some chair lifts (an obstacle in itself for me), and suddenly I was on top of the world. It was sunny and beautiful, with snowy mountain tops all around me, I felt lucky and privileged more than I can say.


But then you have to get down again. And it turns out there is a giant leap in skill between the bunny hill and a green ski run. I was pretty terrorized all afternoon, and practically crawled back to the car, resolving not to come back. I seriously HATED it.

Sunday I found my backbone again, and resolved to have a day finding the easiest runs that would give me some pleasant practice and a better attitude. This strategy worked wonders, I got better, more confident, a little faster, I felt pretty pleased with myself.

Until the last 10 minutes or so. I found myself at the top of an amazingly steep hill, the last hill to get to the bottom. I'm telling you friends, I nearly burst into tears. I probably took five or ten of the longest minutes of my life crawling down this hill, while most shooshed down in 60 seconds. It's okay, I have nothing to prove, but it was a painful reminder of how much further I have to go.

But have faith, reader! I went to the office and asked them to tell me which greens are "easy." I got some good advice. At least they sounded like they knew what they were talking about. I have two weeks before my next backbone check, pray for me.

These pics were taken with my phone, but if you click on them they do enlarge enough to be worthwhile.