I survived Star Hill Ski Resort and all I got was this lousy blog post

Listen to me very closely. I have some very important advice for you that could change your life someday. OK, are you listening? Ready for this? Here it is:
Never get on the wrong chair lift your first time skiing. Unless the first things you want to master are “how to bail out without dying” and “getting up off the snow”. Those are the lessons I had carefully drilled into my hips, my legs, and, hell, even into my gloves. I thought I should share them with you while they were fresh.

So I’m back from skiing, and I am alive. Someone tell my dad. Try to leave out the part about falling a lot. It might make him worry. Also, tell him that I clipped my nails the other day and that I managed to survive that too. (Just kidding, Dad! Love you!) Yes, thanks to Jason, my pasty sherpa from the Rockies, I have not only survived my first journey to the slopes, you might even say I thrived. If by thrived you mean “kicked the bunny slope right in the ass”. You should have seen me out there. Slaloming between 6 year olds, dodging couples going down while holding hands on snowboards, riding chair lifts. Oh, man, I was like Schwarzeneggar in Total Recall. I was simply too much man for this Earth.

Meanwhile, while I was rocking out on a 10 degree incline, Jason and Jordan were flying down sheer cliff faces, and flying by flapping their arms, and breaking the sound barrier with their minds, and God knows whatever else it is that experienced skiers and snowboarders do as easily as picking parsley from their teeth with toothpicks. I mean, fuck! They’d go down these ridiculous slopes which would obviously cause you to rocket towards the bottom of the mountain, burst into flames, and die, except somehow they were not dying, and were, in fact, quite game to do those same slopes many more times. They assured me that as you ski more and more “everything will begin to click” and it will be easy, by which I assume they mean that I will eventually grow balls the size of watermelons, which will come in handy when I fly totally out of control on ungodly difficult slopes because I can always use them as an anchor.

So anyway, one of these schizos—the one called Jason—led me down a dangerous path the first time up the mountain. It was my first time skiing, but it was also their first time on this particular mountain. Jason made a very understandable mistake. From the exit of the resort building you can only see two chairlifts. One of these was clearly the expert lift, so we went to the other one, thinking it must be the beginner slope. Whoops. It turned out that the beginner slope is deviously hidden from sight. You have to climb a hill (WTF??) to get to it. The slope we chose actually turned out to be an intermediate slope.

Now for those of you who haven’t skied before, the word “intermediate” might not sound all that intimidating. All I can say is, I no longer think I would feel fear if I had to face a firing squad some day. Never in my life has my ass been so thoroughly kicked by anything. Never have I even imagined that I would complete a task so difficult and grueling. It took an hour to get down that slope. As soon I’d stand up (when I made that foolish decision) I’d be sucked helplessly down a horribly steep incline with no control at all over my speed. All I could control was my direction, and when I chose to fall. This is where I learned my previously mentioned skills of “avoiding death” and “getting up”.

That’s about all I seemed to be learning, because I’ll tell you what, I sure as hell didn’t learn how to get that damn “make a V with your skis to stop” nonsense to work. In fact, I never got that to work very well all day. In the end I came up with the theory that it has something to do with the way I walk. I don’t walk with feet parallel. My natural posture puts my feet in a V, so it’s already like I’m turning my feet relative to where they feel natural just to stand on the skis normally. I then have to twist them farther to get into the stopping position. I think this might be why I couldn’t apply much pressure to use the skis properly, as Jason described, “as snow plows” to stop myself. In the end, on the beginner slope, I more often slid perpendicular to the direction of the slope to stop. It’s supposed to be harder that way, but it worked better for me.

Anyhow, somehow I made it down the intermediate slope. I felt sorry for Jason, because he blamed himself for picking that chair lift. He really shouldn’t have. The signs were in Korean! It was just as much my responsibility as his to look out—after all, he’d never been to this slope before either. He’s such a nice guy though, he just kept apologizing and telling me I was doing great and that I’d get it eventually. It was such a long and frustrating descent, but he got me through it. I really appreciated the way he stayed positive. I needed that.

By the time we made it down, I was starving in addition to mentally exhausted. I went inside to eat while Jason and Jordan continued to ski (or in Jordan’s case, snowboard). I went to the cafeteria and got some rice curry while cursing the day that snow was invented, and generally dealing with a strong desire to just quit right there and get a cab home or something. By the time I finished my food, however, I could see this was crazy talk. I went on the intermediate slope! The first time I’d ever put skis on! Of course it kicked my ass in. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. It’s supposed to exclude beginners so more experienced skiers can really shred some snow. I went back outside with resolve. This time, I would find the right slope and do some damn skiing.

I found the gosh darn thing in its jerk-ass hiding spot and got in that bull-honkey chairlift and then, I’ll tell you what, then I was skiing! I spent the rest of the day going round and round on that slope. I probably went down it about 8 times altogether. Maybe it was 10. I talked with an Australian girl who seemed really cool, but unfortunately had to run all of a sudden when a guy came up to her and told her that someone in their party had been injured. I talked on the chair lift with a Korean guy who was thrilled to get a chance to practice his English. I went as fast as I could go without losing control completely, and then went faster by accident many times. No worries though. By this time I was an expert in the art of the controlled fall-stop. Nothing to it, really. You just turn your feet and slide. Falling to a stop on purpose is even kind of fun. One time while hitting the snow, I did a 360 with my poles still in my hands. Then I pretended I did it on purpose. Fun!

That was my ski adventure. I learned a lot and it should be more fun next time. I learned to control my turning, how to be safe if things get dangerous, and that chairlifts aren’t quite as scary as they seem (although they’re still the scariest part of the whole experience—fuggin heights). Basically I learned everything except how to stop. But hey, who needs that!

I also feel, because I always look for a lesson in things, almost to the point of pathology, that it was a good experience because just when I felt like I absolutely had to quit, wanted to quit, couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there, suddenly it got a hundred times easier. Now I just need the same breakthrough when it comes to teaching kindergarten (and talking to girls!) and I’ll be a straight up assassin in no time. This week, the mountain. Next week? The world!

As always, I love you all,
Randy