Why Ski?

This weekend, I tried cross country skiing for the first time. It was amazing. This new form of travel is so much fun. It's great to glide over the snow, instead of trudging through it.

To recap for those of you not living in California, we were pounded with some of the most extreme weather we've seen in years. Where I live, we were hit with three major storms leaving us a very thick blanket of snow. 2 wonderful feet. In areas like LA, flooding and mudslides were commonplace, and California even saw tornadoes. To help put it in perspective, the barometer dropped to the lowest ever recorded pressure. As I said in a previous post, I went to school only half a day last week, because of the extreme weather.

I had never had the urge to ski before. Skiing to me was one of those "that looks like fun" activities. My schools snowboarding and ski club, which heads to Mountain High in February, doesn't include me. Now, though, I wish it did. Why couldn't this obsession have hit me sooner?

My sudden urge to ski is the result of a couple of things. First, I recently watched a bonus episode of The Rest of Everest, in which Ben Clark skied from Ophir, Colorado to Telluride, Colorado. This made me realize what skis enable when it comes to mountaineering. Second, like I said above, we were pounded with snow. While I love snow days, they can create a sort of cabin fever. Friday afternoon, I was able to rent a pair of skis for the weekend, and I used them every possible minute of it.

Saturday, I headed down to the park, because of the large, flat baseball field. I knew I could go there and ski without worrying about running into anything. I walked right next to the baseball field, which had a bench that I used to go from snow boots to ski boots. To get there required about 100 feet of plodding through virgin snow. After getting the skis on and my feet properly underneath me, all I had to do was do it, so I did. I had watch a tutorial video the night before, so I had a bit of an idea how to do it. Also, I figure skated for years when I was younger, so I was comfortable enough with balance. I simply had to accept that I would fall.

I started slowly, making a circle around the field. It was easy enough, but I felt quite clumsy. After I was comfortable on flat ground, I started toward the small hills throughout the park. Both going up and going down required technique adjustment and a fall or two. Saturday resulted in a tired, hungry, happy person. What fun!

Sunday, I spent hours on the skis. When I learned I wouldn't be able to try some local trails that I felt I could handle, I decided to put on the skis and practice in my front yard and the vacant lot directly next my house. This was fun, though I received several bewildered looks from passers by. This was kind of embarrassing, but I was having too much fun to care.

In the afternoon, I was joined by Alannah, my best friend and victim of my outdoors obsession. She used my mom's skis, which she bought a few years ago and used only a few times. Alannah, by a convenient twist of fate, is exactly the same size as my mom. We went to the park and did nearly the same thing I had done alone on Saturday. An hour and a half was gone before I could blink.

In the future, I look forward to trying telemark skiing. Telemark skis are like cross country skis, in that they have a free heal, but are just as strong in downhill skiing as alpine skis. It will happen soon enough, but right now, nothing feels soon enough.