The Agony of Defeat.  Father Time Never Loses.

I have skied for 38 of my 49 years.  It comes with the territory when living in New England.  Our Puritan forebears might not have been so keen on the endeavor, given that it does qualify as recreation, but I suspect they would come around to it.  First, it has become obscenely expensive thanks to the increased lack of personal responsibility resulting in law suits resulting in high insurance premiums for ski resorts.  Second, it can be physically painful either from cold or from pushing oneself to “feel the burn” as a long lost and long beloved friend has come to call it. 

Expensive and painful.  Yes.  Those Salem Witch Hunters would have taken to it like a duck to water.  After dunking the witches in said water, that is.

I have done my level best to transfer a love of this sport onto my children.  Of my four, the oldest and youngest seem to have taken to it the most, which likely comes from my having done more of it alone one-on-one with them than the two in the middle.  When all four podlings skied with me, I felt like a pack mule, and was often times losing my mind trying to keep them all upright and in the controlled, downhill position.  I was not a fun and loveable dad when feeling like I was herding cats.

So now I share an after school ski program with the youngest, my 10 year-old daughter, on a great little mountain where I often skied 35 years ago.  It has gone under and been resurrected three times since then, and it is my sincere hope this iteration of Crotched Mountain can sustain itself.

To say I “share” the ski program experience with my daughter might be a bit of an overstatement.  She rides in the car with me and then ditches me to head over to her friends to get dressed.  She comes to me for money for dinner, and then she heads off with her friends again until such time as she needs to get back into the car whereupon she hits me up for something to eat on the way home.

Somewhere out there is a 10 or 11 year old boy who does not know what the hell is going to hit him in about 10 years.  If he did, he would just hang himself now and get it over with.

So I ski alone.

And I thoroughly enjoy skiing alone.  Chair lift rides give me time to reflect after which I can simply point the skis downhill and go with reckless abandon.  Perhaps somewhat foolishly, I still “attack” mountains.  I still seek to generate sufficient speed that there’s an extra tenseness at play as you think to yourself, “If I dump it now, it could really, really hurt.”

This edge keeps you on your toes.  It blocks out everything else in your mind.  It shuts it off, in a sense, which is an absolutely invaluable concept when seeking to get away from the daily pressures in life.  The focus has to remain on the turns at this speed.  You need to have your skis pointed at turn 1, shall we say, while your eyes are darting looking for the path to turns 2 and 3 while also quickly scanning left and right for other skiers.

And it is New England skiing, so you always have to take ice into consideration.  If I cannot hear my skis scraping as if they were ice skates, I figure I am in the air and likely going to hurt myself.  Chalk this up as another reason why my Puritanical forebears would love skiing in New England.

Once you get down from this run, you simply get back on the chair, ponder whatever pressing matter it was that you had on your mind, and gird yourself to get off and do it again, only this time you hope to push yourself a little bit more and go a little bit faster.

And this is where I managed to get myself into trouble with the lift operators. 

In order to ski, I have to strap on a custom built knee brace due to having my Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) removed the day before Reagan got shot in Jody Foster’s honor.  There’s been a subsequent scraping to remove calcium deposits, a little cartilage, and some fraying of the Medial Collateral Ligament (MCL).  All in all, the thing is pretty much a mess.  At least that was the assessment of the orthopedist the last time it was scoped sixteen years ago who said to me in recovery, “The next time I see you it’s not going to be pretty.” 

Needless to say it can stiffen up on the chair lift ride.

As such, I swing the leg back and forth for the last part of the ride to keep it somewhat loose such that I can get off the lift and get moving.  Therefore, as I come up to the end of the lift, I am usually swinging both legs while putting on my pole straps and moving my arms back and forth to stretch the shoulder muscles a little such that I leave the lift able to simply take off without having to stand around at the top of the mountain.  I have never understood why people hang out by the lift gathering themselves.  You were just on a damn chair held hostage and you are paying big money to do this?  Get your act together during that idle time such that when you hit the snow, you can go. 

The lift operator at the top of the mountain did not like this.  He looked at me and shook his finger.  I had no idea at what he was driving.  Was he shaking his finger at me because he felt I was too old?  Did he not like my outfit?  Was it a comment on form?  What was HIS problem?

Now, in my teens and twenties, I had many a finger wagged at me for all sorts of transgressions on the mountains, with many of them highly deserved.  I need not regale the reader in what those things would be.  This would have been the 70s and early 80s.

Do the math.

But now?  I am as pure as the new driven snow when skiing.  I need all my deteriorating faculties to be in top condition, such as it is, in order to keep pushing myself.

So you can imagine my surprise when I reached the bottom of the lift after this finger wag to have a lift operator come over and stop me in my tracks.

“Were you just bouncing the chair?” the operator asked.

I looked at this kid seeking to convey authority and had to suppress a laugh.  An inch or two taller than me, he was a slightly doughy lad younger than my oldest son.  “Well, I was swinging my legs back and forth if that’s what you mean.”

“Well don’t do that.  It could get the chair to bounce and come off the cable.”

“Good fun fact, Junior.” I thought to myself.  Instead I went all obsequious on his ass and said while tapping my knee brace through my ski pants with my pole, “Not a problem, my leg can stiffen up, so I like to keep it moving when I am sitting on the lift.  I’ll be sure to tone it down.”

With that his eyes got as wide as saucers and his demeanor changed.  Apparently he noticed a few liver spots and broken capillaries and realized I was honoring his authority voluntarily rather than being intimidated by him.  The epaulettes on his figurative uniform were not nearly as gaudy and gilded as mine, he now realized, and he was beginning to understand that I was doing my best not to pull rank.  “Okay, mister.  I understand, but just take it easy on the chair, ok?”

“Not at all, son.” I said, wincing at the fact I had thrown the ultimate indignity to the kid by calling him son.

With that, I got up to the lift where the kid who’d been handing me my chair all night looked at me, shook his head, and laughed.

And so for that chair ride up I put aside my troubles and simply laughed at the experience.  Past admonishments on the slopes were for being young and stupid and full of testosterone.  Admonishments now were for preparing myself to hit the slopes in a futile effort to be young and stupid when in actuality it’s just being old, in denial and slightly reckless.

When young I laughed at being able to pull one over on the operators.  Now I laughed at trying to pull one over on Father Time. 

Hopefully big daddy gets the joke.