Skiing

I was inadvertently reminded by a friend about a skiing experience of mine. I should point out that he reminded me by telling me a skiing story of his own, wherein his wife ends up being carted down the mountain by the ski patrol and ends up needing surgery. Which proves the point I am about to make, which is that skiing is a Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Decision.

I was a Girl Scout when I was younger. This is a poor decision that probably deserves it's own entry, but maybe I'll get around to that later. For now, it's relevant only because the my troop leaders decided it would be a good idea to take us on a ski trip. We were a bunch of twelve year old girls, and we were usually excited to do just about anything. I was particularly excited because it was such a European and fashionable sounding thing to do, and one more thing that everyone else seemed to have done that I hadn't.

"Going skiing is a terrible horrible no good very bad decision," said my mother, who tends to say that about a lot of things. So I ignored her.
"Going skiing is a terrible horrible no good very bad decision," said my father, which should have set off the warning bells, because my father doesn't usually know when things are a terrible horrible no good very bad decision, or usually care, so long as they're not fatal.

But I ignored him too, and signed up for the ski trip. My mother signed up as a chaperon, because she and her best friend (who was notorious for terrible decisions which were a result of a complete lack of attention to reality) decided not to miss an opportunity to sit around in a ski lodge next to a fire, drinking hot chocolate, and mocking the idiots foolish enough to go skiing.

I'm going to tell you right now. There was no ski lodge. But this is not a story about my mother's poor decision, or the psychological trauma she suffered as a result.

I honestly don't remember too much of the day. I know that I was immediately cold. I know that at least two of the girls were crying for at least part of the day, and I think it was more related to girl drama than ski incidents. I remember whining a lot and being unable to get up the hill and having my mother and her friend pull me and my friend up the bunny hill by our ski poles. I remember taking a few short workshops on the way up the hill. How to stand. How to turn left and right. How to get up if you fall.

For this one, the instructor asked for a volunteer to demonstrate. No one volunteered. He picked me. He had me get down on the ground, and proceeded to twist up my legs and my skis so I was tangled. Then he said, "Okay, use the skills we just discussed to stand up!"

Eventually he and my mother came forward and spent five minutes getting me out of the snow.

Then it was time for my first solo run down the bunny hill! I stood at the top, ran over stance and left and right in my head, decided I was ready, and pushed off.

Has anyone else noticed that none of my lessons included learning to stop? Because it was not until approximately ten seconds after pushing off that I noticed. When I did notice, I panicked. I tried "left" and "right" and "screaming," none of with succeeded at stopping me. What WAS successful was the little group of people milling about at the bottom of the hill who had not taken flight at my initial scream. These people were very effective at stopping me, abruptly, although they were not exactly "happy." Lucky for everyone I am quite a small person, it was quite a small hill, and no one suffered any permanent physical damage.

I, however, suffered all kinds of emotional damage that has stayed with me for many years. I don't think I went up the hill again that day. I believe I went to sit with the crying girls. Possibly I started to cry as well. I never skied again, and I have zero interest. Why go through all that work with the cold and the snow and the tramping and the lifts and the ropes when your reward is to fall on your ass somewhere on a mountain/hill and possibly end up in surgery? Or sitting in a building with crying 12 year olds and NO FIRE AND NO HOT CHOCOLATE?

Stupid.

I have never been snow boarding, but I can't imagine it's any better. I have to agree with my friend who told me, "If God meant for us to fly down the side of a snow-capped mountain with our legs bound at the ankles, he would have made us that way to begin with.

Yes. I believe that too.

GPS

I am one of those individuals who does not own a smart phone. I am also one of those individuals who cannot read a map. Once I tried to read a map in 2008 and I was informed that it was upside down. That was the last time I bothered trying to read a map. Other times involving me trying to read a map generally ended in bad areas, unknown areas, or at least areas we were not at all trying to get to. I am somewhat convinced my sense of direction comes from my father, while my father would rather consider the possibility that I am in fact an alien rather than the possibility that this a shared trait.
In any case, I am the perfect candidate for a GPS, being unable to make use of a phone or a map or my limited brain power. I've managed to get by all right though, mostly due to the fact that I was mostly driving around Pittsburgh, where I'd lived for ten years. Rachael will be the first to tell you that despite my ten years of experience, I had a few misadventures, but for the most part I felt pretty confident.
Now, however, I am in the D.C. area, which includes the city, Maryland, and Virginia which include treacherous paths like the Beltway and lots of roads with numbers like 355 and 187 and 185 and 495 and I am beginning to lose track of what goes where. Those are just the big ones. In my neighborhood alone we have at least a million one-way streets, and four million streets that have signs that say things like, "DO NOT ENTER! but only on Mondays and Wednesdays from 7-9 in the morning and 4-6 in the evening and sometimes on Saturdays when it's raining but only when you can see the moon in the sky during the day and the neighbor is playing the accordion on the porch with his dog."
And if that's not enough to drive a person insane, half the streets are shut down for construction, so even though I finally managed to pick out a few safe routes they've all been shut down by large machines and men and sometimes it takes me an hour to get down the street.
I spend half of my time driving backwards and forwards and making possibly illegal u-turns, some of which have been near-misses that almost resulted in accidents that would have made the evening news.

I think it may be time to join the ranks of functioning driving Americans and buy a damn gadget, before one of my poor driving decisions ends in total destruction.