Metamorphosism

Things you learn skiing

1. Fear and crashing correlate positively: the scareder you are, the more you crash.
2. It is possible to fall on your back hard enough to see stars.
3. My father-in-law is nearly 70 and skis like a god. He says only scaredy-cats fall onto their backs.
4. Likewise, the less scared you are, the less you crash. If you grit your teeth and go for it, it helps.
5. It is possible to go from hating skiing to loving it in just three days.
6. The food they serve in the lodge tastes good but makes you fart.
7. If you do enough skiing, you can eat all you want, and drink all the beer and schnapps you want, and not gain weight.
8. No matter how good you think you are, as soon as you congratulate yourself, a 5-year old Austrian child zips past.

I had a great time. I did not injure myself particularly. Everyone said how proud of me they were. My father-in-law the snow god even said, and I quote, "Mig isn't so bad," which meant a lot, as he takes his skiing seriously.

There was one slope that scared me a lot, but I made it down a few times and it ended up being fun. The first time, though, basically what happened was I looked at it, fell onto my back, saw stars, then heard the "sshhhhhshshshshsh" sound of one of my skis (both of which had disengaged themselves from my boots) continuing on down the slope so rather than lie there feeling sorry for myself I had to jump up and run down after it in the hopes of catching it before it went off the cliff. My other ski had parked itself up the slope. I eventually caught the first ski and as I trudged back up to the second ski Snow Ranger Alpha (ten feet tall from that angle) swooped down out of nowhere, picked up the other ski and gave it to me, asked whether I was okay and zoomed off, leaving me to wonder whether she was a hallucination, and how I was going to make it down the slope.

She did the Snow Ranger thing a few times: An old man lost his cap and she swooped down, picked it up and gave it back to him very theatrically. Snow Ranger Alpha, keeping the slopes polite. I spent the last day skiing with Beta and noticed she has the gene: a little girl lost her ski pole and Snow Ranger Beta swooped down and returned it to her.

Gamma spent 5 days taking ski lessons with a bunch of other little kids. I assumed she'd have my klutziness, but she fit right in with all the other Austrian kids: they prefer to ski down most slopes in a straight line, in order to make it to the lift first. They raced a slalom on their final day and Beta and I watched and figured we'd have to comfort her when it was over, but she came in third out of nine kids and got a medal, which now hangs on her wall with her framed certificate.

It was fun. I went there expecting it to be and it was. The weather was a little too warm, so the snow got a little mushy, but it was still fine in the mornings or on shady slopes (the rest of the family got tired of my obsession with the temperature). Now they're expecting weather to get cold and snowy again, so people going next week will have good skiing too. I got to go to the lodge up at the top of all the slopes, a very old-fashioned Austrian ski lodge, and hang out with my father-in-law and wife and Beta and a lot of other people. They spent what seemed like an awful lot of time in there - I'd have expected them to do more skiing. But if you get tired, you can't ski for shit anymore. It really is safer to get more rest like that. And the lodge is really great, with the rough-hewn timbers and the fireplace (actually a Kachelofen) and the beer tastes good.

I was also able to get over my fear of (slightly) steep slopes, and of my old nemisis, the t-bar lifts. (For those of you unfamiliar with a t-bar lift, it is a cable that runs up and back down a slope, with t-shaped things hanging down, attached to spools attached to the cable. You stand beside a partner, grab a "t", stick it under your asses, half a "t" per ass, and let it pull you up the slope. At the same time, the lift, which is animate, wants to you to tangle up your skis and fall down in an embarrassed pile, after which it will knock you on the head with the "t", adding injury to insult, while all the other skiers watch the show. This particular ski resort also had gondolas and chair lifts.) One day, riding up with Beta on a t-bar lift, I was telling her about my observation that skiing was a lot like playing music - once you were on a slope, like playing a song, you couldn't quit for anything - you were stuck inside it, in the flow of the thing and had to maintain the right speed and rhythm until you were finished. Then it occurred to me what a tiresome person I must be to be stuck on a ski lift with and apologized for philosophising, but she hadn't been listening anyway.

One day a military helicopter was hovering next to the lodge, waiting to land. I was skiing towards the lodge, watching the helicopter, wondering what it was waiting for - why it was hovering rather than landing. It was waiting for me to get out of the way. As soon as I got out of there it landed on the snow and a VIP came out.

[PS: Their website is here, and they have a cam, which either shows or is taken from the lodge I mention, not sure since it wasn't working when I checked.]