Remember that innocent post from yesterday in which I was jazzed to try skiing and thought it would go well? Those were the good ol' days. I wish I could be that young and innocent again, because all did not go as planned.Unless of course my plan was to have 2 good runs on the easy slopes, then prematurely agree to go have lunch at an elevation of 11,000 feet above sea level, then be forced to make my way down...by ski.
Oh, I forgot to tell you. I'm terrified of heights. I thought I was a little scared of skiing, but compared to heights, I want to give skiing a bug hug and a kiss.
Have you ever heard the expression about "talking someone off a ledge"? My ski buddy actually had to do that to me. It took about 20 minutes just for me to stop crying enough to get my skis on after seeing how high I was. Then about an hour more of sobbing and shaking to get me 1/16 of the way down the mountain.
Once I took my skis off and started walking down the mountain to the nearest building, it sure went a lot faster. During this time (btw, if you are like me and are unfamiliar with ski etiquette, apparently walking down a mountain holding your skis is NOT normal), a ski instructor skied by and asked me if everything was ok. I am sure he was expecting a simple head nod and not my answer, in full tears: "Is there any way to get down this mountain without skiing?" After which he directed me towards the nearby building and told me where to call ski patrol.
I don't think I've ever talked on DSW about the time that I was kidnapped and held at gunpoint, but this was far worse then that. I know that's dramatic and saying a lot, and I mean every word of it. I don't want to pretend to know what it feels like to have a heart attack, but if I had to guess, I think I got pretty close. I know that if I did not take matters into my own hands, my heart could not have sustained that heart rate without killing me.
I think my ski buddy thought I was bluffing, but the hell if I didn't walk right down the rest of that slope, walk inside fighting back tears, and ask ski patrol to take me down by any means possible.
Much to my surprise, I was not taken down the mountain on a ski mobile. Rather, I might have been the first actual non-injured person to descend a mountain, being manually towed by a ski instructor, by what we those in the biz call a toboggan.
If there was a word stronger than embarrassing, insert it here____.
Although I got down the mountain at record speed, I did find it very ironic that the solution the ski patrol has for taking scared skiers down the mountain is to ski them on a sled at 80 mph. But I got down nonetheless and that was all that mattered.
In addition to not being able to cross my legs without picking up with my arms today, I also look like I an Asian who got stung by a bee in each of my eyes from crying. Not, as someone asked me, "because Asians cry a lot," but because my eyes were flying at half-mast, at-best for the entire day.
I smartly decided to end my ski career after one day and spent the next day reading Bossypants by Tina Fey (amazing by the way), while the rest of the crew skied all day long. The only thing regrettable about not skiing when everyone else does is that you can't justify carbo-loading at the nearest pizza joint when you haven't burned 1,000 calories skiing all day long. I'm pretty reading books isn't good cardio, no matter how far above sea level you are.
I'm looking forward to tomorrow when my eyes turn back to Causcasian status, my legs don't feel like logs, and the emotional trauma from my ski episode seems like something that happened to a clumsy idiot in a movie...not to myself.
Epic.
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