Ski

I went skiing yesterday. Kind of a spur of the moment thing which I picked because I had the time and it was such a perfect day. I went to Bear Creek, formerly known as Doe Mountain. All the slopes are named after bear-related things. Did they all used to be deer-related things? I don't know.

People seemed surprised that I was going alone, but don't you always ski alone? You can ride the lift with someone, but the skiing itself? Anyway, I like having some alone time.

The skiing was marvelous and there were only a couple of hundred people there, so I decided to ski without a helmet. I just bought a helmet last year (see my earlier post on the War on Fun), which I'd resisted because the wind in your hair thing is part of the joy of skiing. I rarely fall- once or twice a season tops- but when it's crowded I'm concerned that someone might run into me. I guess the joke about snowboarders got to me. How does a snowboarder introduce himself? "Sorry, dude."

I got through the day without head trauma, but not without incident. Getting off the lift with some other guy in the chair and we noticed that there was a pole sitting in the snow right where you got off. Of course, it's the job of the guy in the booth to notice this kind of thing and stop the lift, but he was too caught up in the many other responsibilities of sitting in a little booth, so the other guy tried to kick it away with his ski. We both got so fixated ont his pole that we forgot to get off at the right time. I jumped off, and as I did the other guy started to and then stopped, hitting me in the chest with his skis in the process. I landed awkwardly and my leg and back hurt a bit as a result.

Aside from that it was a great time. My favorite thing was, as I was leaving I stopped in the bathroom (kudos to Bear Creek for the many boxes of tissues in the bathrooms, by the way) and as I'm washing my hands a snowboarder came in, covered with snow, goes over to one of the electric hand dryers, and stands with his back to it and pulls back on this waistband so that the hot air warms his butt. Excellent, dude. I used the other hand dryer.