What a fantastic way to spend a day.
Immediately when we returned to out car from the ski hill, I had serious trouble getting my boots off because between bending over and tensing muscles to pull my foot out of my boot, it seemed like all the muscles in both my legs cramped up all at once. It took seven tries to get two boots off, with huffing, puffing, and exclamations of “monkeys!” liberally interspersed between attempts.
Twenty minutes later, my toes were almost thawed and I hobbled rather like a city slicker who’s just spent his first day in a saddle into the restaurant where we stopped for lunch. After eggs, bacon, pancakes, and a significant infusion of coffee, I walked almost normally back out to the car.
Dinner tonight will include chocolate banana milkshakes. Best way I’ve ever found to eat more than one banana’s worth of potassium at one time, and I know my muscles will tell me about it in the morning if I neglect them. Did you know they don’t sell potassium supplements with more than 6% of the DRV? Apparently you can OD on that stuff. Crazy. I hope you can’t OD on bananas. I mean, I’ve never had an issue, but it bears consideration.
At any rate, it was beautiful. Fabulous day, and between the fact that it was midweek and the metro Denver area roads were horrible this morning, most people decided not to venture up into the mountains–as soon as we got four or five miles west of the city, everything cleared up. The sun was shining all day, we only had to wait for the lifts once or twice, and that was because they stopped, not because there was a crowd.
The snow out here is wonderful… I only skied like a weenie on one run–part of one run, really–and that’s only because we came upon a section of mountain with my absolute least favorite snow conditions, and all of a sudden I freaked out about pretty much everything, leaned back and skied on my doggone heels half the time, and in general looked like a total n00bie. Luckily, Matt was the only one around. I did manage not to fall. And in my defense, it was a black run and it ran through a field of boulders taller than us, so hah. But those things didn’t bug me. I would have weenied out in that snow on a green trail. Mutter.
In an attempt to counteract my weenie-ness I threw myself down a steep, bumpy section of the mountain at full speed on the next run. No less than five times in under a minute, I was pretty sure I was about to bite it and end up rolling down the mountain, but I held it together and skidded to a stop at the bottom of that section with my heart beating only twice as fast as usual. Take that, weenie skiing! Matt followed me (at a much more reasonable pace, mind you) and actually complimented my form. Ha! Victory! Take that AND THAT, weenie skiing!
And just so you don’t start thinking I’m too cool for words (haha), I did fall once. Naturally, I was hardly moving when it happened. Matt and I were stopping mid-run to decide which break in the trail to follow, and my ski tips slid over his. In my attempt to correct, I fell over sideways. Glamorous, yes? The saddest thing is that if I hadn’t remembered to let go of my pole, I probably would have hurt my wrist pretty badly. How pitiful would that story be?
I don’t even want to think about it.
But all of that is just extras. The real fun comes on those runs where everything comes together, when the hill gives and takes in exactly the right places, when the absurdity of flinging oneself down a mountain with waxed boards strapped to one’s feet recedes and those boards become extensions of oneself, when you get to ride back to the top of the mountain with your best friend in the world and tackle it all again. When you go so fast you might as well be flying, and there’s only the pure joy of the wind rushing past and the shushh of snow around you.
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