Skiing

My parents are avid skiers. Naturally, they raised their kids to follow in their footsteps. Genetically, I am a self-motivated individual. Additionally, Ski Skool is the worst, and once I was enrolled, I pizza-ed and french fried my way to Ski Skool graduation as fast as possible. (In hindsight, I believe that I was actually born knowing how to ski, but I think my parents wanted some time to themselves on the double black diamonds, so alas, my sister and I were confined to those flat slopes with the rest of the snotty -- snooty? -- crowd.

Ski trips became an (at least) annual event for our family. I remember renting those cabins, waking up early, putting on all those layers of ski gear, THEN realizing I had to pee... piling into the car for the brief yet windy road to the slopes. Renting the ski gear, putting both of our body weight into getting one of our boots to snap into that damn ski, then finally hopping onto the chair lift. Corey and I found those blues and many blacks to be a cinch in the early days. I'll attribute that to mental toughness and gymnastic training we received in our youths.

Eventually, though, we became older. At the bitter ages of nine, as now ex-gymnasts, we were physically weaker, and as almost teenage girls, we became also emotionally weaker. The anticipatory wall sits and the aftermath of soreness in the quadriceps and whichever other body parts we happened to fall on... they were just too much to bear. And not to mention the cold! I mean, snow is COLD. It's bad enough to just stand in it, but sometimes I found myself skiing down the slopes as fast as possible for the sole purpose of getting to the warmth of the ski lodge (with its overpriced hot chocolate), all the while, snow falling in my face and turning my skin and heart to ice. More than once I could have sworn that the falling snow flying in my face was actually cutting me and causing blood to surface. The highlight of those trips became the rides to and from the slopes, where we listened to Adventures in Odyssey on cassette tapes. Curse the moment when we arrived to the slopes and had to shut off the heat in the car and the epic tales of Mr. Whittaker and Eugene.

The climax of this saga is a specific moment that I will never forget. We were on the ski lift; Erin and my parents got on the chair first. Corey and I had taken the chair behind them. It was snowing steadily, and we had been on the slopes for a few hours already. Corey and I began discussing the elaborations of our misery, and we both began crying. We did not even like skiing anymore, we were tired, and we just wanted to watch a movie or listen to more Adventures in Odyssey. Why couldn't they just leave us in the car with the keys while they skied? When we got of the ski lift, our parents watched us disembark in tears, and made an executive decision which has largely influenced my teaching philosophy: "If you complain when we're doing something that's supposed to be fun, we're not going to do it." No more ski trips.

Of course, this kept us happy for a couple of years while we lost all our lower body strength. Then we just became jealous of our parents going off on their own ski trips, and our friends going on their family ski trips, but we were in no place to complain. I was nothing short of relieved when I discovered on our senior ski trip in high school that I could still ski the pants off of many of my classmates (not sure if anyone actually lost their pants).

This brings us to today. Corey has come into a small fortune that is two ski passes. I am coming into a large fortune which is SPRING BREAK!!! We just decided that on Monday, we will be hitting the slopes like the good old days. Exception: Let's try to keep the crying to a minimum.

Corey sent me an email today in preparation that included the following checklist:

Packing list:
Change of clothes
Tylenol
Car cell phone chargers
Adventures in Odyssey
Coke (Diet Coke?)