{"id":55,"date":"2012-11-03T13:55:40","date_gmt":"2012-11-03T18:55:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stevenmarchi.org\/?p=55"},"modified":"2014-09-21T23:26:31","modified_gmt":"2014-09-22T04:26:31","slug":"crash-course","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevenmarchi.org\/?p=55","title":{"rendered":"Crash Course"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reprinted from The World According To Mike<\/a>, circa 1990<\/em><\/p>\n

There’s nothing quite like downhill skiing.\u00a0 The wind in your face.\u00a0 The sound of your skis swooshing through powder.\u00a0 The feeling of control as you glide over the pristine white landscape…\u00a0 Okay, maybe not the feeling<\/em> of control…how about the illusion<\/em> of control.\u00a0 The illusion that threatens to shatter at a moments notice, with each bump, ice patch or god-forbid mogul that crosses your path.\u00a0 That’s a little more like it.\u00a0 The euphoria of standing on a sloping sheet of ice, but moving <\/em>at the same time.\u00a0 And adding to the excitement, there are at any given moment, at least a dozen other people within a few yards of you.\u00a0 And each one of them is moving with a velocity and direction essentially random relative to your own.\u00a0 Some of those vectors are executed with the same lack of control, perhaps even ineptness, as your own.\u00a0 Others demonstrate a command of the skill of downhill maneuvering that borders on godlike.\u00a0 Ironically, the members of the former group are the less dangerous.\u00a0 The worst thing they can do, short of running directly into you, is to somehow get in front of you, and then stop.\u00a0 But the latter group.\u00a0 The one’s who appear to know what they’re doing.\u00a0 Those are the ones to worry about.\u00a0 They cut back and forth at random, they leap into the air.\u00a0 They rush passed the beginners, cutting the encounter as close as possible, using them as moving slalom course markers.\u00a0 And don’t even get me started on snow-boarders!<\/p>\n

As you can probably guess, I am not an accomplished skier.\u00a0 Even at the height of my ability, which only came at the end of a three-day ski trip to several ski hills, I only reached a level of … passing competence.\u00a0 I have never jumped (at least not on purpose).\u00a0 Moguls remain a treacherous hazard to be avoided at all costs.\u00a0 Icy patches continue to unnerve me.\u00a0 And I still get cold sweats as I try to maneuver into position for any interaction with a chair lift.\u00a0 And perhaps the most unfathomable thing of all, is that I can traverse a steep incline (as long as it isn’t icy) by cutting back and forth in virtual horizontal paths across the hill, but each time I have to turn to the right, I go into a brain-lock in which I run the risk of forgetting how to move my feet to complete the turn.\u00a0 This lapse usually occurs just as the skis point straight downhill, and the speed starts to increase!\u00a0 So like I said.\u00a0 I’m not very good.<\/p>\n

I really should have taken lessons.\u00a0 Even that single morning crash course at most hills would have been better than the method by which I became acquainted with the sport of downhill skiing.\u00a0 Any accredited individual would have sufficed.\u00a0 But instead I turned to … of all the responsible people available at the time … I selected … my brother, Steve.\u00a0 It seemed like a good idea at the time.\u00a0 He had been skiing before.\u00a0 He had even coached a good friend of his earlier that same season.\u00a0 By the end of one day under my brother’s tutelage,\u00a0 his friend was hopping from mogul to mogul on the nastiest black diamond run at the lodge.\u00a0 A fact that many of the lodge-loafing snow bunnies can attest to, as they watched his unconscious body skipping down the embankment like a stone on a pond.\u00a0 I had heard about the incident, and even winced at the story of how the collarbone had cleanly snapped in two places.\u00a0 I knew my brother had instructed the unfortunate boy in how to ski.\u00a0 I failed to realize that the day of learning and the day of injury had in fact been the very same day!\u00a0 But Steve had learned his lesson!\u00a0 He assured me that under no circumstances, would I be approaching the collarbone-hungry black-hearted run known as Big Bear.<\/p>\n

We arrived at the hill … I say hill because I am fully aware that the ski-runs we have in the Midwestern United States are not, despite their colorful names, mountains.\u00a0 They are hills.\u00a0 They can be traversed in a single run of a chair-lift, you don’t feel your ears pop during your descent, and there is no need to employ St. Bernards to wander the slopes with barrels of rescue spirits tucked under their strong chins, as nobody is ever really out of sight of the lodge.\u00a0 But I digress.\u00a0 Suffice to say, that we arrived and procured rental equipment for myself (my brother had his own skis, which for some reason that eludes me today, meant that he knew what he was doing then).\u00a0 The first thing my knowledgeable instructor did was inform me that all rental equipment was crap.\u00a0 The second thing he did was to assure me that it was okay if my<\/em> skis were crap, because I wouldn’t be doing anything that required good <\/em>equipment.\u00a0Thus reassured, I donned the bright orange rental boots and walked out of the rental office with two long sharp pieces of crap gripped in a bear hug.\u00a0 Each step in those boots was like … like walking without ankles … which is a stupidly obvious thing to say, because that’s exactly what it was!\u00a0 But I’ll dispense with the trivialities of putting the skis on my feet, and jump right into the lesson.<\/p>\n

Right outside the rental office, is a tiny slope.\u00a0 This is known as the “bunny hill”.\u00a0 You reach the top of the bunny hill by holding onto a rope and getting dragged up the hill.\u00a0 My brother pushed himself down the slight incline toward the base of the bunny hill.\u00a0 He used his skis in much the same way as an ice-skater moves across the ice.\u00a0 He then turned the skis perpendicular to his direction of motion, leaned sideways, and did a snow-spraying hockey-stop about thirty feet away from me.<\/p>\n

“Now,” he commanded, “Push yourself with the poles until you start moving.”<\/p>\n

I dutifully did so, feeling my first sensation of ski motion as I moved at near-snail-like speeds across the uneven terrain.<\/p>\n

My brother deftly maneuvered his feet so the tips of his skis pointed in toward each other.\u00a0 “You see this?”\u00a0 He called,\u00a0 “This is called snowplowing.\u00a0 If you do this, you will stop.”<\/p>\n

I looked down at the skis, and I swear, you probably could have gotten a visible reading on a stopwatch of how long it took to travel the length of a single ski.\u00a0 But I pointed my toes toward each other.\u00a0 The tips of the skis touched and my forward momentum instantly died.\u00a0 I had stopped!<\/p>\n

“Okay, now try it again.\u00a0 But this time, try to get a little more speed.”<\/p>\n

I straightened the skis, pushed forward with the poles, and then feeling reckless, pushed again!\u00a0 I was now going twice as fast as before, and had nearly reached my brother.<\/p>\n

“Snowplow!” he called.<\/p>\n

The tips turned in, and miraculously, I coasted to a stop. “Alright!”\u00a0 I said, now quite giddy.\u00a0 “How do I use this rope thing?”<\/p>\n

“You don’t.”<\/p>\n

“Then how do I get up the bunny hill?”<\/p>\n

“You don’t.\u00a0 Tow-ropes are tricky for beginners.\u00a0 I don’t know why they even provide them.\u00a0 Follow me.”<\/p>\n

With that, Steve skated off once more, heading toward one of the ski lifts.<\/p>\n

As we waited for our turn at the chair, my brother begain with a quick pep-talk in how embarrassing it would be if I screwed up getting on the lift so badly that they had to stop the lift.\u00a0 Then <\/em>he proceeded to tell me how to get on the lift.\u00a0 The idea is this.\u00a0 When the people in front of you go stand in front of the moving chair, you line up.\u00a0 As soon as the chair hits them in the ass, start “walking” forward.\u00a0 By this time, your predecessors are safely and sanely on their way up the hill, so you take their place on the starting line.\u00a0 Then make like you are getting ready to sit down, because when that chair hits your thighs, that’s exactly what you’re going to do.\u00a0 So I did as instructed and soon found myself standing with my butt pointed backward and trying to get the ski pole strap out from around my gloved hand so I could use my hand to hold onto the lift.\u00a0 I turned around to see where the chair was a split second before it hit me across the back of the thighs.\u00a0 I instinctively sat down, and reached out with a flailing pole-clad hand to grab the support post.\u00a0 The chair seemed to bounce wildly, causing our skis to alternately float over, and then slap down on the snow-packed lift track.\u00a0 My brother reached out and steadied me, while simultaneously giving the lift operator a cheerful thumbs-up.\u00a0 A-OK\u00a0 Nothing wrong here.\u00a0 We’re all fine.\u00a0 Just keep us moving.<\/em><\/p>\n

I know what you’re thinking.\u00a0 You’re thinking “That’s it?\u00a0 You didn’t fall?\u00a0 What the hell are you telling this story for if you didn’t fall?”\u00a0<\/em> I can only tell you, dear reader, that not only did I not fall at that moment, but for the duration of this story I will not fall.\u00a0 I will not break bones and I will not be injured in any meaningful way.\u00a0 And it is in the heart of that essentially inexplicable fact, that the point of this story lies.\u00a0 Because let me tell you.\u00a0 If anyone deserved to fall … but I’m getting ahead of myself.<\/p>\n

We arrived at the top of the hill.\u00a0 I put my tips up.\u00a0 I alighted on the landing pad and even skied down the burm to the apex of the ski-hill proper.\u00a0 I felt unsteady, and flailed my arms wildly, but I succeeded in coasting to a virtual stand-still at the nexus of ski-run heaven.\u00a0 A half dozen different trails snaked off from this point.\u00a0 Three were marked with the ominous black diamond.\u00a0 Two had a cautionary blue square.\u00a0 And one run had a cheerful little green circle and bore the name “Maple Syrup”.\u00a0 I pointed my skis toward this last one and began pushing with my poles.\u00a0 Steve spoke up immediately.<\/p>\n

“Where are you going?” he asked.<\/p>\n

“The beginner slope.”\u00a0 I replied.<\/p>\n

“You don’t want to do that.”\u00a0 he replied shaking his head.<\/p>\n

“Why not?”<\/p>\n

“The beginner slope is always icy.\u00a0 And it’s too narrow.\u00a0 We’ll go on the intermediate run over here.”<\/p>\n

“But…”, my protest was ignored as he turned and skated off toward the starting point for the ski-run with the dubiously cheerful name of\u00a0 “Sunrise”.<\/p>\n

Steve coasted forward until the level starting area began to slope downward toward the crest of the hill.\u00a0 He then hockey-stopped again and gestured for me to follow.\u00a0 “Come on!”<\/p>\n

Now you have to understand.\u00a0 From my point of view, all I saw was a well groomed gentle slope of snow, that ended in a sharp horizon line, upon which my brother was perched.\u00a0 Behind him, was nothing but blue sky and the distant landscape of pine forest below.\u00a0 But from where I was standing, there was no hill behind my brother.\u00a0 There was no sign of the bottom, or the lodge, or even treetops.\u00a0 There was nothing but a cliff.<\/p>\n

“You’ve got to be kidding.”\u00a0 I said.<\/p>\n

“Just push yourself over here and stop.\u00a0 It isn’t as bad as you think.\u00a0 Trust me.”<\/p>\n

I looked around.\u00a0 There were a couple people hanging back behind me, as if they knew what was going on, and didn’t want to miss it.\u00a0 I couldn’t back down now.\u00a0 I glanced longingly at the cheerful green circle to my right, and pushed myself toward my brother.<\/p>\n

As I moved along the snow, I was acutely aware of the unevenness of the terrain.\u00a0 Every ski track caused my feet to shift.\u00a0 Every little bump caused my body to sway.\u00a0 And yet, as I moved toward Steve, I could see the horizon behind him get slightly more tame.\u00a0 The closer I got to him, the more the hill sloped downward, and the more of the run I could see.\u00a0 At the same time, the steeper the slope got, the greater the effect gravity had on me became.\u00a0 I was now moving at a noticeable clip as I wended my way toward my younger sibling.\u00a0 He stood before me with a look of glowing pride and satisfaction that I was accomplishing the goal we had set for ourselves today.<\/p>\n

“All right.” He said cheerfully, “Stop right here next to me.”<\/p>\n

With a confidence born of experience I pointed the toes of the skis inward, just as I had done at the bottom of the hill.\u00a0 To my surprise, my forward momentum did not change in the slightest.\u00a0 I was now only a few feet further up the slope than Steve, and the smile on his lips faltered. “Stop now, Mike”.<\/p>\n

I turned the tips a little more sharply.\u00a0 The backs of the skis turned out.\u00a0 “I’m trying.”\u00a0 I said in a slightly higher voice as I slid right passed him, my speed beginning to increase as I moved closer to the true incline.<\/p>\n

“Push out with your heels!”<\/p>\n

“It isn’t working, Steve!”<\/p>\n

My speed was now reaching serious levels, and with it, my panic was beginning to grow!<\/p>\n

“Stop!”<\/p>\n

“I can’t”<\/p>\n

“Then turn!”<\/p>\n

I remember this part clearly.\u00a0 For just a moment, the world grew silent.\u00a0 It was as if nature herself had paused a moment to acknowledge that most reasonable of commands.\u00a0 I turned my head around in a vain attempt to lock my gaze on his.\u00a0 “You haven’t told me how to turn\u00a0 yet!”<\/p>\n

Actually, the last bit came out more like “tuuuuuurn yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetttttttt”, as a result of the Doppler Effect that came into play as my skis hit the true meat of the hill and my speed jumped up several notches.\u00a0 I was standing stiffly.\u00a0 Knees locked, body rigid.\u00a0 Poles out at forty-five degree angles to my side.\u00a0 The skis, as if finding a will of their own, straightened out, and I shot down that slope like some live action parody of Wile E. Coyote.<\/p>\n

The wind whipped against my face and stung my eyes.\u00a0 Tears began forming from the blast of arctic air.\u00a0 I was still yelling the remnants of the last word, like a siren wail of doom.\u00a0 My doom.\u00a0 I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was leaning slightly backward on the skis, which reduced the drag on them even more.\u00a0 In fact, I was picking up speed so swiftly, that Steve, who had apparently pushed off and was pursuing me, tucked into as aerodynamic a stance as he could muster, could not catch up!<\/p>\n

For some reason, my mind was focused on one thing.\u00a0 If I fell at that speed, I would die.\u00a0 And so, I did absolutely nothing that would hasten the act of falling.\u00a0 I didn’t move a muscle.\u00a0 I blinked a flash-frozen tear out of my eye and looked ahead.\u00a0 Halfway down the run, Sunrise took a gentle turn to the left.\u00a0 A turn that I would have to follow, or I would be paying an unannounced visit to a rather inappropriately placed ski-patrol storage shed.\u00a0 I glanced down at my feet.\u00a0 The skis were about a foot apart … mostly.\u00a0 They actually varied between six and eighteen inches depending on the texture of the snow as it shot passed beneath me.\u00a0 I looked back at the shed.\u00a0 It was getting closer.\u00a0 I looked at the skis.\u00a0 When they oscillated to a point where they were closer together, I did a quick hip-twist to the left.\u00a0 Miraculously, my trajectory down the hill moved a few degrees to the left.\u00a0 With hope renewed I repeated the twisting action again and again.\u00a0 I cleared the edge of the run by a mere five feet.\u00a0 If I had been a little slower, I would have found myself on the icy little path that the teenagers on this hill used for jumping practice.\u00a0 But luck was on my side as I glided back out toward the center of the run.<\/p>\n

Steve was still valiantly pursuing, but the best he could do was keep pace.\u00a0 My speed, which had faltered for only an instant on the turn, climbed again as I reached the second leg of the hill – the home-stretch which was even steeper than the portion above.<\/p>\n

I remember a series of skeleton jarring bumps right before the hill began to level out.\u00a0 Somehow I stayed upright.\u00a0 I vaguely remember the line of skiers waiting for the chair-lift.\u00a0 I think I passed between several of them, still moving at a fairly good clip.\u00a0 I hit the burm of snow that marked then end of the official run – a point defined as the last place people hockey stopped before getting in line for another run up the hill.\u00a0\u00a0 I don’t remember being airborn, but I must have been.<\/p>\n

After that the snow became very rough.\u00a0 I found myself following a path that the snow-cat had used to climb up to the access road.\u00a0 Climb is the operative word here.\u00a0 I was now on an up-slope.\u00a0 And my wild first ski-ride came gently, and majestically to an anti-climactic end.<\/p>\n

I was shaking.\u00a0 There was adrenaline coursing through my system like you wouldn’t believe.\u00a0 There were horizontal streaks of ice coming out of the corners of my eyes.<\/p>\n

Steve came running up behind me, whooping, or cheering or some such nonsense.\u00a0 “You did it!\u00a0 You DID IT!”<\/p>\n

I turned on him at once.\u00a0 “You moron!\u00a0 I could have been killed!”<\/p>\n

“But you weren’t.” he replied, “You skied.\u00a0 You should have seen yourself.\u00a0 It was awesome!”<\/p>\n

“I had no idea what I was doing!”<\/p>\n

“I couldn’t even catch you.\u00a0 I can’t believe you didn’t fall!”<\/p>\n

I paused for a moment.\u00a0 An unsaid quip locked in my throat.\u00a0 “…”<\/p>\n

“Do you know how cool that is?\u00a0 You didn’t fall.\u00a0 Your first time down, and you didn’t fall.”<\/p>\n

I looked back at the line of skiers.\u00a0 I looked at him.\u00a0 “…”<\/p>\n

“You took those jumps at the bottom without panicking.”<\/p>\n

Jumps?<\/em><\/p>\n

“You kept your head.”<\/p>\n

What jumps?<\/em><\/p>\n

“You’ve got to do it again!”<\/p>\n

“I didn’t do any jumps.”<\/p>\n

“Well…not like most people do.”\u00a0 He pointed up the hill, somebody in a gray jacket and a blue hat took to the air on the last incline of the hill.\u00a0 No sooner did his skis hit the ground, than he was airborn again.<\/p>\n

“I didn’t do that!”<\/p>\n

“Well, no… you pretty much skipped right over the tops of them.\u00a0 I almost caught you, but I had to go around.”<\/p>\n

I looked up the hill.\u00a0 I looked at Steve.\u00a0 I looked at the line of idiots waiting for the lift.\u00a0 Only a fool would go back up there after a run like that.\u00a0 There was no way I was going to do that again.\u00a0 I looked at the hill again.\u00a0 A half dozen brightly clad skiers snaked back and forth down the gentle slope, their graceful turns akin to a well choreographed dance. “Steve?”<\/p>\n

“Yeah?”<\/p>\n

“How the hell do you turn?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reprinted from The World According To Mike, circa 1990 There’s nothing quite like downhill skiing.\u00a0 The wind in your face.\u00a0 The sound of your skis swooshing through powder.\u00a0 The feeling of control as you glide over the pristine white landscape…\u00a0 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-young-adult"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevenmarchi.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevenmarchi.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevenmarchi.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevenmarchi.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevenmarchi.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/stevenmarchi.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":249,"href":"https:\/\/stevenmarchi.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions\/249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevenmarchi.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevenmarchi.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevenmarchi.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}