Monday, January 12, 2009

Sibling On The Slopes

So my parents had taken my sister and me out to the slopes in Washington sometime in the mid-eighties... that's when we both learned to ski. I enjoy telling that story to Utahns, because when they hear I learned to ski in a building, they make funny faces. I've only gotten back into the snow since I've been here, and Renee hadn't skiied since. So I think we both suspected that, when she arrived here shortly after Christmas, it was going to be less of a vacation and more a slaughter. "As long as there's beer," she said.
She doesn't wake up until after one PM either, so we were both asleep as we drove up to Snowbird the next day. I explained as best I could about traversing and weight shift, about edges and cambers, but all she did was stare out the car window at the snow.
"That's snow," she says.
"I know," I say.
"No," she says. "But there's snow." When we actually arrived at the mountain, she kinda went into a little mini-trance. I had to put the beer in her hand.

We got her strapped into the board, and she practiced a little on the flat part at the bottom of the hill. Then we jumped on the lift, and when we got to the top, she fell right off. But what you have to know about Renee is that she trains horses, and so regularly falls down from a much greater height and with more velocity, and so this and every time she fell down, she came up laughing. First hurdle was getting into a standing position. For some reason, she just couldn't stand up without her feet slipping out from under her. We tried all kinds of stuff, including using me as monkey bars, but nothing worked. She finally arrived at this little maneuver:

And once she knew how to get up, she didn't stop. It was like watching me two years ago. I saw her get confused about the same things that confused me, grin at the same things I grinned at, and she got ice face about as much as I did. And by the end of the day, she was shredding pretty good.

And then there was more beer.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Kind of refreshing to see these shots now that the mercury is shooting up past 90! LM

4:20 PM  

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