Nothing But Love :: golf blogger

Skiing on the Slopes

Fact: Bill does not ski.

I noticed there was an article or, maybe, it was advertisement on cnn.com about four places to ski out west. Going to one of these resorts and skiing down mountains is orgasmic for a lot of people. Around these parts, a lot of people are enthusiastic about skiing at Alpine Valley east of Cleveland or Boston Mills south of the city.

Not me.

And acquaintances of mine who ski say that it's cool and exhilarating and all kinds of other adjectives, cooler and more exhilarating out west in the Rockies, but still cool and exhilarating and all kinds of other adjectives locally.

Yeah, right.

People fall down when skiing. People get hurt skiing. People get killed skiing. And people get stuck for several hours on ski lifts. So, what's so great about it? Is it the wind in your face when it's 3 degrees, the feeling of speed sliding down the slopes -- that sounds like a freezingly fun-filled frostbiting thing to do.

I had dinner with an old acquaintance -- our children went to elementary school together, so the wives were friends and I guess we'd be hangers-on at events, and I coached a women's softball team his wife played on. That's the acquaintance part. He didn't come to the softball games. I guess the dinner was more like the wives wanted to have dinner so they could catch up and then I was stuck listening to him. And I must admit that I wasn't always listening to him, tuning out most of the time. And the food wasn't that great, either, by the way. He picked the place.

He skis a lot. In fact, I think that is all he talked about all night, taking weekend trips to Vail, Breckenridge, Park City, Las Vegas, all kinds of places, and how he has had several knee surgeries and broken legs and ... well, I'll leave out the extra-curricular activities he described, as if I really want to know that stuff with the wives chatting about the kids and stuff like that just right over there, across the table. I thought that he should have been discreet about his indiscretions; and as he droned on and on, my mind wandered; and I wondered why I was there. And did I mention that the food wasn't very good? But that may have been a function of him. Whatever.

So, I decided I'm not going to go skiing or even try it out. It could be the fear of falling and suffering pain in the process that is the obstacle.

What is the more likely reason is that I just don't like the way "SKIING" is spelled. It's something about those two i's in the middle of the word that makes me cringe every time I see it.

Posted by Bill at January 16, 2011 08:37 AM