The X (Skier) Files

From the website archives...

Yes, I live in Colorado. No, I don't ski. That's not a typo.

It wasn't always thus: I had my first experience with skis in the early 1970s, shortly after leaving the non-comparable ski country that was NE Iowa. I had a cousin who was an experienced skier, and he convinced me that I could pick up the sport without the time-consuming nuisance of lessons, just by following his few tips on what to do and not.

He shoulda been a used car salesman.

His theory of my trainability took a hit with my introduction to the T-bar lift, as I wasted me, him, and about a half-dozen others as soon as I got on it and did exactly what he told me not to do. But my cousin was, if anything, patient, especially when it came to exacting revenge: he convinced me I'd do just fine on the 'blue' slope, and to the chair lift we went.

Mounting the chair lift was a piece of cake; dismounting it was another thing entirely, as I skied off it and right into the side of the shack that powered the lift. The snort I heard behind me had nothing to do with him "blowing his nose", as he sleazily tried to claim he was doing at the time.

With a cocky "you'll get the hang of things by the time you get down", he was off, confidently to-and-froing his way across the slope and out of sight. And he was right: by the time I got down, I had mastered (a) falling (b) scattering gear all to hell and gone (c) collecting the scattered to hell and gone gear and (d) repeating the entire sequence, again and again. I finished that run by trying to use a tree as a braking device, and finding it had none of the 'give' of a tackling dummy.

I walked down the balance of the slope, with the sound of birdies singing in my ears; curiously, they were nowhere to be seen. But those weird stars were...

I didn't make a second attempt to discover the joy of skiing until the latter 70s, when a Methodist youth group I belonged to took a ski trip to a different resort. Once again, I eschewed lessons, at the urging of my cohorts. They needed entertainment, and I was chosen as it. I musta missed the drawing for that 'un. At least this time, I avoided the T-bar episode, and instead got caught on film doing a maneuver that resembled a big cloud of snow and my gear going in all different directions, like Charlie Brown after a pitch from the mound. I can thankfully say today that the photo what caught that is some place I'll never have to see it again.

Under the theory that third time's proof of a real gullible idiot, I made a skiing sortie with yet more friends who needed cheap entertainment and picked me -- again, I missed out on the drawing -- as 'it'. Sticking to my MO of "I don' need no stinking lessons", I didn't take any. But I had learned a few things. Key of these, in the words of Clint Eastwood, "a man's got to know his limitations". And I did: I stuck to green slopes. Clad in a garage sale lemon-yellow snow suit -- prompting loads of "yellow snow" quips -- I amazed my friends, the Ski Patrol and odds makers in Vegas, by not falling once on my first run of the day.

I only needed the next run to bring me back to the realities of gravity and the fact that the ground doesn't give like the body does. An audible "he's back in form!" drew a sorta under my breath "a**hole!" in reply, and a determination to make that my last snow divot for the day.

I began the first leg of my third run perfectly, if one doesn't count the several "whooooa"s and crazy-legs imitations that marked my almost cashing in a perfect run. Then came a directional faux pas: at the junction of the green slope and something more nefarious, I took a wrong turn. After a short distance that didn't look familiar, I found myself at the top of an incline that looked distinctly ungreen. The length of the slope was only...eh....150 or so yards. The downward angle was only...eh...9% or so. From my vantage point, it looked more like a 50% slope. But there I was. So with a "what the heck", I went for it.

For about 30 yards.

Then, as I attempted to make a turn to the right, my left ski kept going left...and the binding didn't break away. I biffed with some velocity, and wound up tumbling and sliding down most of the rest of the slope, coming to rest at the bottom, with a nice debris trail marking my elongated divot. At which time I realized my left ankle would brook no more weight on it, far as skiing went.

And there I lay -- a distinct, disheveled patch of yellow snow -- knowing the mirth my current situation would generate when my friends found me sometime after my picture appeared on a milk carton. Before the carton could go to the printers, however, two skiers came by and one rocketed off to the nearest Ski Patrol call box, while the other made the mistake of asking me how I felt: "with my hands". She didn't make that mistake twice.

Presently, the Ski Patrol and a segment of my party showed up: the Ski Patrol loaded me on one of their medical toboggans, while my smirking friends cleaned up my debris field and made token efforts to act concerned, while biting their lips to the point of almost drawing blood. About the time that the Ski Patrol had me strapped in and was about to get me on my way, someone yelled, "Hey! Who's got the camera?".

I waited until the toboggan was starting to move to yell, "I do!". Securely tucked in my coat pocket, where with me strapped in, it was out of reach of one and all. For all the laughs that day, the last laugh appeared to be mine.

Nyah nyah.

It's been 25 years since I last donned skis and wrought havoc on a slope in Colorado, and that's just fine. In the words of the group America, "memories don't die, but with time become hazy". I find that there's some truth to that, too: Colorado Ski Country USA no longer uses my picture as a catch-all warning sign for slope hazards.