On a Slippery Slope

The following story happened a long time ago. No names were changed. No one is innocent.
We were in North Carolina on the ski slopes. My wife rented her equipment. I was decked out in the finest ill-fitting garage sale ski paraphernalia that 1975 dollars could buy: eight foot wooden skis, leather boots, wooden poles, mismatched pants, shirts and socks. My momma had gotten a good deal at a garage sale.
Skiing looked so easy…especially the part about getting onto the lift. As the chairs came around, the skiers would simply, “rump up” and sit. With my eight foot skis I had trouble getting my skinny rump into position. After a couple of aborted starts, I made contact! As the lift seat rose from the ground I dangled my skis and shouted to my friend Bob. He was making his attempt to get on the lift, one seat behind me.
Tickled by something I said, he missed and was knocked over by the lift. Of course, everything came to a screeching halt while Bob gathered himself up and plopped into the lift. As everything started moving again, I felt a slight shift on my right foot.
When I looked down, I could see that one of the ancient leather straps had surrendered to the years and that the ski was held to my boot by only two remaining straps. That ski must have weighed forty pounds! I watched in horror as the remaining straps began to fail. I tried to reach down and grab the ski, but missed. First one strap and then the other broke and the giant ski helicoptered to the snow below. Besides the immediate weight shift I was overcome with a sense of horror. How would I ever recover it?
My ski took off like a luge at the winter Olympics. When last I saw it, my right ski was speeding toward the woods. I just prayed it didn’t make it through the trees only to wipe out the bunny slope once again.
Actually, I paid way too much attention to the liberated ski and not enough to the eight foot board that remained hooked to my left foot. As we reached the end of our ride I heard Bob laughing in the chair behind me. With no indication from the management that they were even aware of my plight and no sympathy forthcoming from my wife, I determined to dismount the lift on one ski. I figured if slalom skiing was possible on water, why couldn’t it be done on snow? I forgot one little detail: I could not then, nor can I now, slalom ski on the water.
As the front end of my ski dug into the ice, the back end smacked me in the back of my head. I fell forward and my head took another whack from the ski lift. I’m not real sure, but I think my then wife might have had a go at my head with her ski pole. Bob’s wife hit him, too.
Seasoned skiers as well as rank amateurs piled up as though there was a loose fumble at the Sugar Bowl. Finally recognizing my predicament, the management stopped the lift, untangled the mass of skiers and left me to lick my wounds – three miles up in the North Carolina Alps with an eight foot ski loosely attached to my left foot.
The rest of my party skied down the slope leaving me alone to freeze. So much for the honeymoon! Alone, I reckoned I might be able to crouch down and make my way down to find my ski’s mate, slalom style. In an instant I was riding a missile.
I fell off eight or nine times, but truthfully, I didn’t have very far to fall. Into the woods I went. As I ventured deeper and deeper, I realized my track was almost a foot deep. When finally I bogged down, I was waist deep. My 4XL garage sale pants were full of snow and I weighed 500 pounds.
Eventually, the Mounties rescued me on a snowmobile. To add insult to injury, they were dragging my runaway ski. When we got back to the lodge, as my pants were melting, I found that the resort manager had taken an unusual liking to my skis. Apparently, they dated from the 1920’s and had some aesthetic value. With my sharp business acumen, I worked out an exchange: For the remainder of the weekend I had the use of the best rental equipment the lodge could offer. In exchange, he got to keep my boots, poles and skis. Many years later those skis and poles were still crossed over the fireplace in the lodge.
Good equipment did not make me a better skier that day, but it sure made me look better. And when you’re young and trying to impress a new wife or a girlfriend, that is some important stuff.