I really love to ski. For what is perhaps the stupidest sport known to man, it’s quite fun.
I mean really, no other sport could have been as obviously invented by drunken Germans. Please insert your own bad German accent:
Hans: Hey Gunter?
Gunter: Ja?
Hans: Remember that time we climbed the mountain with the keg of beer, drank the whole thing, then strapped the staves of the barrel to our feet and went flying down the mountain.
Gunter: We did?
Hans: Ja! That’s what that big bruise on your forearm is from.
Gunter: Oh! I was wondering what that was…
Hans: We should try to make money off of it.
Gunter: How? Bring more beer?
Hans: No, make some sort of chair on a string to drag people to the top. That way they can drink on the way up!
Gunter: Brilliant!
And so on and so forth. And as people ski on stuff, these little bumps called moguls rise up. And here was my problem today.
I decided to go for a fairly moderate black diamond run (the most difficult rating) here called Holiday, which doesn’t look too bad from the chair.
My dad, his arthritic legs hurting and his brain suffering a sudden and severe burst of sanity, decided to go the easy way and meet me at the end of the run.
Holiday looked quite a bit worse as I was slo-o-o-wly picking my way down it, and eventually doing a major face plant into the mountain, right below the chairlift.
I lost both of my poles, one about ten feet above me and the other about five. I couldn’t just sidestep back up the mountiain because the snow was deep enough that it wouldn’t hold my skis.
So I kicked off one ski, but I couldn’t get the other off. So I used the first ski to reach my lower pole, and used my pole to get the other ski off.
I tried just walking up the slope, but I was sinking in the snow like quicksand.
So I ended up having to crawl up the slope, since my knees weren’t sinking as fast as my boot-clad feet. The entire time, concerned onlookers were making sure I was OK from the charlift.
Thankfully, the only thing injured in the entire incident was my ego.