All Downhill From Here, Part 2

Previously, on THE UNDESIRABLE ELEMENT:

"I decided to challenge my longstanding losing streak against gravity and outdoor sports by going skiing at Seven Springs."
"I failed."
"All is not well."
"flying out of control"
"crashing into bystanders"
"totally humiliated"
"heckling and demeaning comments"
"Everything clicks!"
"I've got the requisite basics to at least make it down the easiest long hill."

AND NOW THE CONCLUSION...

So I await my lady companion's return from her most recent trek up the mountain with great anticipation. I'm convinced that I'm going to conquer this mountain with style and panache, and confidence radiates from my being. Then I see my lady friend come down the slope, and she starts limping toward the lodge.... limping toward the lodge. What the hell is this?

I haul my ski-strapped ass over to her. She's quite the avid snowboarder, so if she's injured, that doesn't portend good things for my future. Apparently, while up on the slopes, she saw what was clearly a novice snowboarder ahead of her, and she tried to pass him. Unfortunately, just as she was beside him, the newbie suddenly lost control and veered sharply to the left, colliding with her and sending her crashing backwards to the ground. The newbie was uninjured, but my snowboarding friend was left with quite the bruised hip.

I sit with her in the lodge for a few minutes while she recovers, and I tell her that we could just leave now if she wants. It's getting late anyway, and the resort is closing in an hour (10:30pm) or so we think. "Oh no!" she says. "You're not leaving until you go down that mountain. Come on, we're going up."

Now I'm not the world's most masculine guy, but if a woman is willing to drag herself up the mountain in considerable pain just to take me down once (that's totally NOT a euphemism), man-honor demands that I follow. So she shrugs off her pain, and we head back over toward the ski lift.

Of all the challenges associated with the ski trip, this lift was the one I feared the most. I've always had something of a problem with heights (to say the least), and perching myself precariously on a swinging park bench as a cable drags me up a mountain while I'm 30 feet above the ground struck me as a potentially nerve-wracking experience. But with my pale imitation of male machismo firmly in place, I pretend not to be bothered by it, and we make our way to the lift. At first, the experience was rather pleasant. This isn't so bad, I muse to myself. It's just like a weird roller coaster. But then we get higher..... and higher..... higher. And then the air gets colder... and colder... and colder. I wrap my arm tightly around the back of the ski lift bench and grip the side bar like I'm Luke Skywalker clutching the bottom of Cloud City.

"Not as easy as you were expecting?" my lady friend asks.
"I can't believe I was thinking about skydiving." I reply dejectedly.

Despite my childish caterwauling, we make it to the top of the ski lift, and I'm suddenly feeling very pumped about successfully using the ski lift without crying like a baby or falling to my doom. "Let's do this!" says I.

We start our sojourn down the mountain, and for the first ten seconds, everything seems to be going well. I'm zipping along at a controlled clip, feeling confident in my ability to successfully navigate my way down the precipice when suddenly....

CRASH!!!! I face-plant hard into the snow. My skis come flying off (as they're supposed to), and after wiping the snow and ice off of my face, I work to put them back on. "No worries," I say to my friend. "I just got discombobulated for a moment." - Yeah, that word will totally make me sound cool.

I pick myself back up and start moving again, but this time there's trouble. I start careening out of control in a very scary way, and I hear my lady friend call from behind me: "JP!! Watch out!! You're going the wrong way!!" Holy shit!! The last thing I need is to end up on some sort of slope of doom, so I do the only intelligent thing and deliberately throw myself into the snow. Again, my skis pop off, and lady friend catches up to me. "You were about to go down the black diamond path (the hardest one)." She points to a path off to my left. "That's the one we want to do."

We successfully make it to the proper track, and I ski about twenty yards when, once again.... CRAASSSHHH!! This time, I land directly on both of my knees. This hit doesn't look particularly bad; however, all of the force goes straight into my knees, and the pain radiates through them in a thoroughly unpleasant way. My faithful lady friend stops whenever I crash and waits for me to re-orient myself.

"What's the problem!?" she yells.
"My knees feel like they got smashed by a sledgehammer!" I call back.
"What??? You crashed into the log jammer??"
"Never mind. I'm coming!"

I get back up once more. But before I get moving, I hear the distinct sound of WHOOSHING behind me. I turn around to see a whole cavalcade of skiers barreling towards me. Oh shit! I think to myself. I'm about to re-enact the wildebeast sequence from The Lion King. Fortunately, this graceful stampede consists of experienced skiers and they breeze right by me, but the stream of skiers never stops. The slope is now inundated with people.

I start moving again, and my downhill velocity begins to increase dramatically. I've never felt so completely out of control as a result of my own incompetence. The instructor told me to turn my skis into a letter A to slow down, and I do so repeatedly. "LETTER A!! LETTER A!!" I say to no one in particular. But the advice does no good at these speeds, and I keep going. The "Letter A" business continues for a few yards before I look down and see that I've managed to get my skis crossed. They're in the letter "A" position alright, but I can't get them straight again. A few foreboding seconds pass where I know I'm in trouble, and I can't do anything about it. I literally say, "Oh shit," before falling face-forward down the slope. Now this is a fall of epic proportions. Since I have no balance whatsoever as a result of my crossed skis, I proceed to tumble down the slope over and over and over again. My poles and skis go flying in four different directions. I finally come to stop, staring at the night sky. Lady friend sees all of this and makes her way over to me.

"Oh my god!!! JP, are you okay!!??" She told me later that she thought I'd really hurt myself badly that time. In reality, the knee drop hurt far worse than this spill. As comically ridiculous as my endless tumble must have looked, it really didn't hurt at all.
"Nothing bruised except my ego," I moan.
"Can you keep going?" she asks.
I gesture to the slope - the only way back down the mountain. "I don't really have much of a choice." I say.
"Do you want me to go in front of you or behind you?" she asks.
"Why don't you just head on down the rest of the way," I suggest. "I'll probably fall at least six more times, and there's no sense in you stopping each time."

She agrees and glides effortlessly down the slope. I stagger to my feet, but now my hands and knees are shaking. Not only do my knees still ache from that previous fall, but my nerves are completely shot now. I know full well that another wipeout is imminent, but I don't know when it will come.

The slope has now become a full-fledged ski-way, with skiers whizzing by me at every moment. I hear their whooshing and swishing, but I can't see them as I concentrate on what I'm doing. CRAAASSHHH!!!! Down I go again, but I pick myself up once more and continue. "WATCH OUT!!" I hear a stranger say to someone to my left, but his cry of alarm breaks my concentration and I face-plant again. CRAAASSSHHH!!! It turns out that the resort, in fact, closes at 10pm, so everyone still around has come up the mountain to get one last trip in... right as I'm going for the first time ever.

At this point, I realize that my own confidence is to blame. In a wondrous moment of self-reflection, I recognize that my own nerves are causing me to fuck up the whole process. I briefly consider just sitting on the slope and gliding down the mountain on my ass, but I figure that nothing would be more humiliating. So I say to myself:

"Self, you are not going to give this shit up. You've already been mocked, humiliated, bruised, battered, and emasculated. The least you can do is hold your fat head high as you tumble down the rest of the mountain. You may not look graceful or impressive, but dammit, you'll win the day on your own steam."

So that's exactly what I do. By the time I make it back to the lodge, I've fallen at least a dozen times, and I'm covered head-to-toe in snow and sweat. Every joint in my body aches, and my ego has been shattered. I see my lady friend resting comfortably on the bench outside the lodge.

"Hey! You made it!" she cheers genuinely.
"I must be the most uncoordinated man to ever fall down this mountain," I mumble dejectedly.
"At least you never gave up," she says. "And you're not as full of yourself as most of the other guys here who think they're God's gift to the mountain."
I think immediately of the asshole frat boys in the sauna with their waxed chests and derogatory jeers and heckles. Fuckin eh! I'm totally better than them!

We go to return my equipment, and every muscle in my doughy body aches and creaks. As we hobble back to the car, I say, "You may not believe this, but I think I want to try this again."
"Oh thank God!!" she says, breathing a sigh of relief. "After watching you today, I thought you'd never want to come again. I figured this turned you off of skiing for life."
"Nah!" says me, waving my hand dismissively. "As badly as I did on the mountain, that was still leaps and bounds ahead of where I was when we got here."

The way I see it, I'm not taking all of this punishment for nothing. I'm going to learn how to do this thing and zip down the mountain in a manly fashion. Six-year-olds can do it! Hell, I even learned that former Mrs. Employer, a sixty-five year old rotund woman, can ski. If they can do it, so can I. I'm going to master that mountain like the Agro-Crag.

In fact, I'm going again this Sunday, so we'll find out if I get any better or if greater hilarity and misfortune will ensue.

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"Skiing is the only sport where you spend an arm and a leg to break an arm and a leg."