Memoir: Ski Trip

It was the spring of 2006, my sister, Tiff, was home for break. I was pressuring my dad to take the family to a ski trip; I had not been skiing for 2-3 years, and my legs longed to be on the slope, carving graceful curves out of powder with technologically advanced pieces of fiberglass.  Not wanting to bear the burden of finding acceptable rates, fares, everything that a working man is concerned about in life when taking a vacation, our father set the job upon the rest of us to find a good mountain, sending the possible candidates to him for review.  Our mother, in the behavior of someone who has a deathly fear of heights and skiing, told us she didn’t care which mountain and that Tiff and I should find it ourselves.  So we searched.

      In less than a day (about 2 hours, in fact), we had singled down a couple ski slopes, which included Vale, Copper Mountain, and Breckenridge.  The list was e-mailed to dad, and he replied that Vale was out of the question, with the reason that it was too advanced for us, too far away, and, most importantly, it would cost him an arm in a leg just to get a ticket for the slopes, not including ski rental and gas costs.  This left us with Copper, Breckenridge, and some slope with about two easy courses.  Tiff was trying to learn how to snowboard, and she didn’t want to descend the same route more than once.  Goodbye some slope with about two easy courses.  After evaluation of Breckenridge, snow had been scarce in that location, so a majority of courses were closed.  Goodbye Breckenridge.

      This left us with Copper Mountain.  A nice 75% of courses remained open, it was only 3 hours away, and it had rather nice fares.  We sent the recommendation to our dad, he made a reservation online to save some cash, and we were set for that weekend.

(_,·´¯)

      A vital part of skiing for our family is renting skis from our local shop, “Balanced Rock Bike & Ski.”  Our dad had been working late on that particular week, so it was no surprise when he called our family urgently the day before the trip.

      My mom had been cooking chicken for dinner that evening, and she had just thrown the chicken on five minutes before when the phone rang, blasting out a classical melody converted into Midi format, and the caller ID shining the name “David Davern”.  I picked up the phone.

      “Hey dad,” I said.

      “Hey Trav, you guys need to pick up the skis up. Can I talk to mom?”

      I handed the phone to mom.

      “What do you mean you need the skis picked up?  You haven’t done that?  Why didn’t you call us before?  The shop closes in an hour!  I just threw the chicken on!”  My mom’s voice was growing irritated, and, assuming that I had compiled the conversation correctly, I dreaded the fact that I would be accompanying this woman to the ski shop.  “Dave, you should have picked the skis up already.  Why are you waiting until an hour before the shop closes to call us?  I’m not very happy.”

      Really?  I didn’t notice.

      While she grabbed the chicken off of the grill, the phone was given to Tiff.  After a quick conversation, she hung up the phone.  “He says we have to wear helmets.”

      “Wait, what?” I asked

      “He said we have to wear helmets,” she repeated.

      “We’ve never had to wear helmets before.”

      “Well, he says we have to wear them, otherwise we’re not skiing.”

      With that, we were whisked into my mom’s truck, a blue GMC littered with religious symbols and writings.  My mom had already begun her rant against my father’s actions.

      “I can’t believe your father,” she said, keywords “your father” indicating that she was, in fact, upset.  We were subject to a recap of the phone conversation as she ranted about how “your father” did this and “your father” did that.  It was one of the few times our mom sped, and none can face the fury that is the dread mom Therese Davern.

      After the initial outburst, my sister and I planned how to ditch the helmets.  After getting them, we would not mention them to dad, and he would most likely forget them.

       We arrived at quarter after five, giving us plenty of time to try on boots.  Tiff received a snowboard with what appeared to be a teal Japanese seahorse on the bottom of it, judging by the overly large cartoon eyes and numerous energetic decorations surrounding it.  I received the normal X Scream skis that the shop rented out, sleek slabs of plastic and metal with sides that should have been on a broadsword rather than a ski; mom received two sets of plain snowshoes, one for her, one for dad.  We still had to get our helmets, however.

      “We’ve never had to wear helmets before.”  My sister placed her best voice inflections into this statement, trying to gain sympathy from mom.

      “Well, he’s your father,” mom said.

      “Eh, whatever, he’ll just forget about them anyways and we won’t have to wear them.”  Tiff put on an innocent smile.

      “Tiff, don’t do that,” my mom said, in the tone of voice that indicated she secretly supported our cause and was just putting on a motherly face.

      We got our helmets, and carefully placed them in a dark corner of the trunk of the car, there if dad ever asked where our helmets were and invisible if he didn’t.

      The next day came, and we were off to Copper Mountain.  The exciting, extreme act of staring out the window for two hours at the budding countryside, trying to blot out time, came into play for me, while our parents talked about the news, talked about church, talked about anything and everything that I didn’t care about.  When we arrived, I grabbed my skis and boots, and followed dad to the ticket booth, waiting to get on the slopes.  We got our passes after hours, well, maybe minutes, and we headed over the ski lift.  Tiff and I put on our boots (where I realized that snowboarding shoes are a lot more comfortable than the stiff shackles that are ski boots) and, before we could even approach the ski lift, we were barraged by warnings and near-final goodbyes by our mother as she handed us cell phones and told us to keep in touch.

      Dad simply said, “Stay with Tiff and make sure she doesn’t hurt herself like last time.”

      The conversation ended, and we hit the slopes.

      After we exited the lift, we planned our course, plotting points on the mountain map where we would rendezvous, so as not to lose each other.  Tiff was putting on her board, so I skied down a bit, waited for Tiff…

      Waited for Tiff…

      Waited for Tiff…

      And then crawled back up to see what the hell she was doing.  As it turns out, she was having trouble putting her snowboard on.  When I arrived, she belted down the shoes to the board, tried to stand, and fell.  She tried to stand again, and fell.  She took the board off, stood up, tried putting it on while standing, and fell.  She finally managed to stand up on her own (I didn’t want to help, because then I would have to lift her up after every time she fell), snowboarded down a couple of feet, and fell.

      “Tiff, I thought you knew how to snowboard.”

      “I thought I did too.” She repeated the process of standing and falling again.

      Keeping to the instructions that my Dad gave me, I stayed with my sister the entire time, inch by inch, as she invented the swell new sport of moving down the flattest slope of the mountain at one mile per hour and still managing to fall every five seconds.  Following dad’s instructions started to get less and less desirable by the second.  I told Tiff that I would ski down and meet her at the bottom of the slope.

      After two hours and a phone call to assure that she wasn’t in the emergency sled that just passed by, she came down the mountain, inch by inch, beaming the signal that this was Tiff Davern, and she did not know how to snowboard.  I met with mom, said that there was no way I would stick with Tiff for another 3 hour easy ski run, and I was off on my own.

      Feeling daring, I decided to take the blue slope that accompanied the lift I was riding, using the steel lift poles to create a slalom.  As I descended the first hill of the run, I realized that these slopes were not much steeper than the green courses at Cooper Mountain (the cheap mountain in the neighborhood).  I slowly gained confidence, going faster and faster, slowing down only for the slope’s flat “bumps”, which were created for the construction of the ski lift that accompanied the my route.  On each plateau of snow, a giant orange sign screamed “SLOW” to those passing by.  After every bump, I tried pushing myself faster, until I didn’t slow down enough for one and I started to lose control of my skis.

      I went flying over the hump of snow, the orange sign not heeded as the momentum carried me down, and I skied down to the next bump at approximately twice the speed of light.  I had no chance to stop, I didn’t even have time to react, when I had reached the bump that would break all my bones if I took it at the speed I was going.  I did what any skier would do at that point.  I fell.

      It just so happened that there was another skier in front of me, a small girl with an outfit that could substitute for a nightclub’s neon lights, and obviously new to the blue courses, as she was skiing in paced horizontal lines across the run.  When I fell, my momentum pushed me down about 50 yards the fall point, and she was in the path of my crash route.  I flew straight under her as she flew off her skis and landed on her back. I skidded to a halt after another 30 yards.  When I stopped, I quickly raised myself off the snow, spitting powder out of my mouth, greeted by the “Holy shit”s and “Are you okay, dude”s of the skiers on the lift.  I trudged back up the slope, gathering my skis and poles along the way, and met with the girl to make sure that she was not hurt.

      Her first words were, and I quote, “You bent my poles, man.”  Nothing more, nothing less, except for a look that told me that she was, in fact, angry that her poles were bent.  I was then verbally attacked by her nearby father as he told me that I could have killed someone and that I should have my ticket revoked and how I was, in fact, going way too fast.  No shit, Sherlock.

      I remembered then that I wasn’t wearing the helmet that I was loathe to wear earlier, rubbing the back of my head and wondering what tragic potentials the crash could have contained.

      I walked down the slope, not daring to put on my skis, shaken by the events that had just taken place.  I gained enough courage near the bottom of the slope, and I fastened the skis back on my feet, and took a slow, cautious pace until I finished the run.

      After returning to the ski resort, I found my mom.  I explained the story, and she gave me assurance that the father had probably overreacted, as the girl was, in fact, his daughter.  The slopes still looked like a dark and dangerous place for me, though, so the family called it a day and headed back home.

      My dad got hung up what the girl said.  “‘You bent my poles, man’?  That’s all she said?”

      “That’s all she said,” I replied.

      We had a good laugh about that particular phrase, and headed on home.  I can still remember the exact intonation in which she said that phrase.  I can still remember how she didn’t seem to care about how her head hurt or how a six foot man flew under her at breakneck speeds.

      “You bent my poles, man.”