The Diary of Queen Mothy |
Why I Will Never Ski Again written @ 4:09 PM on February 18, 2002 I'm back from the wild blue yonder, AKA West Virginia. I'm not sure if I mentioned before that my family had decided to "pack up and go skiin'!" for the weekend. I don't ski. I skied once before in Pittsburgh for about twenty minutes years ago, and I took the weekend to remind myself why I haven't done it since. I did write a rather cynical yet humorous entry last Friday before we left about my thoughts on going on this trip, but I pushed the wrong button and lost it before I could post it. Well, let's begin my narration, shall we? You shall not be disappointed, I suppose. Friday: Mother and Daddy Dearest had granted my brother the privelege of inviting one friend on the trip, and he chose his best friend Andy, AKA my living nightmare, AKA my unblood brother. I cannot say I approved of this choice of a companion, especially since he drives me absolutely up the wall when I inevitably have to see him at home. Thus, I wondered how many gray hairs I would acquire over three days in his presence. (Actually, now that I think about this, he did laugh at me for sporting one gray hair above my ear Saturday...) With this all said and done and when Mother had packed two month's worth of provisions for three days, the Reno family plus one headed off for Snowshow, West Virginia, AKA "Hell ain't hot." We departed somewhere around six or so. I sat in the back of the van, the immature adolescent males (who did manage to drive me crazy within the first hour and a half or so of the drive) in the captain seats, and the parental units in the front. At this point, I still had not spoken to my father past muttering questions, and Mother beforehand told me that I had to be civil, as I would be skiing with him. As far as I know, she plotted that perfectly. You see, I had had no skiing equipment prior to this journey, so she took the liberty of borrowing a "$500 suit my friend from work bought in Colorado!" Hence, it was her way of saying, "You WILL ski AND therefore HAVE to speak with your father seeing as you DON'T KNOW HOW to SKI, or I shall never speak to you again!" Smooth, Mom. Real smooth. I caught on to your game fast, but not fast enough to avoid it. Being February, darkness fell across the land of Ohio and northern West Virginia fast, and I was forced to put down my wonderful Anne Rice book, "Vittrio the Vampire." Read it. It's a good one. I set about listening to my Broadway and movie soundtracks on a CD player a borrowed from Katharine, hence blocking out the chaos of the Uno games in the captain seats in front of me. I took the time to observe that part of America, although I could see very little. How dark it had become. And no streetlights on the highways as they cut through the farmlands and into the mountains. Suddenly it was like all civilization had died away, and the night was consuming the world into emptiness. And then we passed through Charleston, West Virginia, and the city was beautiful with a million twinkling city lights like stars. It was so beautiful, and I absolutely hate cities. A million stars, a million souls. I have seen the such before in far grander cities, and it had never touched me until that moment. Maybe I was just tired. But once again civilization seemed to drop off the face of the earth, and we were in the middle of no where. Farmlands. Ranches. An old post office. A lonely streelamp. And it was so dark, it was like the night had come alive and was sending death angels after us. It was so black. A funny thing about it, though, was that we passed by this old cemetery, and there was an ambulence parked outside it. Now think about this. What the hell is an ambulence doing at a cemetery? It made us laugh. When we finally got up into the rolling hills, the trees were jagged and the road keping winding. Left, right, up, down, side to side, fast, slow, side to side, up, down, left, right. . . I got carsick, that's what happened. It was lonely out on the empty farms in the middle of the night. So dark. I spotted a high school. It was about the quarter of the size of my school. I bet they only graduate about 50 seniors a year, as opposed to 500 here. It became damned cold the longer the van went on. Civilization rose and fell away again. Deer signs posted all over the place. Rails to keep cars falling down a 300-foot cliff in the mountains. After what seemed like an eternity of emptiness, we came to a ski rental shop. It was about midnight, and the place was hopping with community church groups and college people renting ski equipment. Cute guys there, let me tell you. Too bad I looked and felt like crap at the moment. The guys behind the counter handed me a rental form asking me about my height, weight, and asked me to circle numbers that had no meaning to me. I didn't know what they were for, but I got a pair of skis and poles anyway. I looked down at my skis and asked myself, "What in the hell am I supposed to do with you two now?" I tried to recall everything I learned from my last skiing trip or from what I observed on the Olympics (Go team USA!), which was a bad idea from the start and I didn't think of anything much. We began our long ascent to Snowshow Mountain, approx. 4,780 or so feet. I hate it when my ears pop. That's annoying as hell. It was also freezing cold and working up a small blizzard by the time we reached our condominium and pulled all our stuff inside. The night was so black and so consuming on top of that mountain that if someone had said there was no world past the Appalachians, I would have believed them. I slept on the hug, comfy couch in the living room somewhere around 1:30 AM. I woke up sometime around 7:30 or so and struggled into that $500 teal blue skiing outfit from Colorado, not exactly waking up with my personal motto of "Carpe Diem," as I was well aware that this Saturday morning may be the last time I ever see the light of day. And after the night before, the sunlight was beautiful. The mountains were beautiful and overwhelming. They were kissed with the snow from the night before and shined in the light of a cloudless morning. It was moving in the way that if you had been there to see them that there would be no denying God's presence in the world. Well, I figured that if I lived this morning that there could also be no denying God's presence in the world. After getting our lift tickets (Holy smokes, was it expensive living up there!), my brother and his hooligan banshee friend took off down this beast of a run tentatively called The Widowmaker, and Dad, to whom had no choice but to speak to me because I would have died out there without him, began to teach me how to ski. "Okay, we will try the small trails and the bunny hill first," he said. "First thing you've got to do is learn how to stop. This is called the snowplow." He pulled his skiis into a V position and informed me how I had to lean back on my skiis and use them as breaks just like that. Of course, I pretended to know what I was doing. There were some pretty fine guys everywhere. "Hold on to your poles. Use them to help you stop if necessary. Remember, the V position. Let me see you try it." I did it without much trouble. But now is the point where I should mention that my feet normally point kind of inwards like that already. I'm not pigeon-toed. But I am a klutz and lazy like that. "Okay, now take it easy, and head down that trail to your left." I pushed gently off the rise and slid down at a swift pace onto the trail. I was hoping friction would eventually slow me, but I kept on going faster and faster down that damnable trail until I finally decided to deploy the snowploy break. I slid thirty feet before I came to full stop, and by that point, I had almost run over five other people. I remembered Jonathan telling me how it was wise to wax your skiis. But don't put too much on because a little bit of wax goes a long way. Well, that ass who handed me my skiis at the rental place, I remember, had made sure I had an extra layer of wax. Thus began my day of skiing. I don't believe I had ever attempted to kill so many people in my life. Just when I was getting used to the mountain scenery and how beautiful the pure snow was on the pine trees-- crrrraaaaasssssh! According to my Dad, he has never seen anyone ski onto grassy knolls before. I'd like to murder that person who announced that the snowplow helps you slow down. In my case, it sped me up to a gentle 45 miles per hour-- you could just about see the smoke rising from the snow in my wake-- down a 20 degree steep run, nearly running over a kid who had already broken his ankle, and spinning out for about 100 feet to keep myself from crashing into 75 people who waited in line for the lift. And that was just on the so-called "Bunny Trail." I promise you that I nearly tore a couple ligaments and I have some bruises on my legs that are the size of Texas. My favorite part happened as I was trying to make a turn around a beginner's trail, and I couldn't stop of course, so I went over a five foot rise that brought me down a fifteen foot hill and crashed into a fence. I swear, I took out half the fence. And then I was stuck, so I had to undo all my equipment. Yeah, I had "fun." In fact, it was no wonder my adventure that was supposed to end at 4:30 pm actually came to an untimely demise at 11 am. Three hours of skiing and remembering the horror in Pittsburgh from years ago made me swear off mountain living. Hell, take me to the equator. After having pizza and watching some cute guys go by, I went back to the condo, dressed into appropriate clothes, and watched the Olympics. I figured watching proffessional people ski was a lot more fun than actually participating. Part 2 to come...
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