Having lived in Utah for nearly 20 years now, Nancy has asked me about skiing a few times: whether it’s fun or not, what’s it like, etc. I used to ski fairly regularly as a teenager but a job and family, as well as being fat and middle-aged, meant that skiing was always pushed to the bottom of my activity list. This year for our wedding anniversary I decided to take Nancy skiing. Nate’s wife Xia has also never been skiing so we decided to sign Nancy and Xia up for private lessons at Brighton.
Lori and Tasha and Tasha’s friend also came with us. We dropped Nancy and Xia off for their lesson and then Nate and Lori and I went and skied. Well, Nate snowboarded and Lori skied but what I was doing can’t really be called skiing. If there is a sport where fat middle-aged men inch their way down the hill on wobbly knees then that’s the sport I was participating in. Skiing seems too grandiose a term for it. Lori is awesome on the slopes. She’s in superb physical shape and her years of skiing with Bryan have really paid off because she has great form and is equally adept at gliding beautifully down the slope and pounding through the moguls. Nate shreds along on his snowboard and I only saw him wipe out once, which equaled my own wipeout total for the day. The problem with my wipeout is that it happened right under the ski lift and the particular lift in question happened to be stopped for a moment so I had a captive audience for my total fire-sale wipeout with poles and skis and hat and goggles flying in all directions.
Nancy and Xia seemed to have a good time and learned how to do the basic snowplow and turns. Learning how to ski in your mid-forties can’t be an easy thing but Nancy was cheerful and doggedly determined. I was proud of her at the end of the lesson as she was able to take the lift up to the top of the bunny hill and ski her way down with big snowplow turns. Here she is inching her way down the practice slope:
It was a fun day for everyone. Thanks to Lori and Nate for hanging out with a fat old poser like me for the day when they could have left me in the dust at any moment. The time and expense involved in skiing means it’s still not likely to be my winter hobby; however, now that Nancy is learning we may go more often than once every 20 years.