Skiing this Weekend

We went skiing for the first time this winter on Sunday.  February 2 is a late start to the season out here.    I am a mediocre skier, but I enjoy spending time outside in the winter.  I am the slowest skier in my family by a lot.  When I am the first one to make it to the bottom of the hill, I am convinced someone in my family has crashed.  I am right 9 out of 10 times.  I should keep stats.

I am okay with my cautiousness.  I want to live to ski another day.  That, and my house is on a hill and we have twenty some odd steps to get to my front door.  If I broke or sprained anything along my spine or south of my bellybutton, I would be housebound for a long time.  Or, I could get a wheelchair accessible room at a nearby hotel and my family would have to fend for themselves for a few weeks with cooking, shopping, laundry, etc.  Hmmm.  That doesn't sound too bad, except for the injury part.

Here is a bit of anger poetry.

Snowboarders

Raping the slopes
And pillaging the powder,
You leave an icy trail
Like a snail leaves
Slime.
You can't see me
As your flat board
Irons the corduroy.

++++

I have this problem where I am in capable of saying bad things about people in public, even if it is a general group of people and not one person in particular.  My anger poetry makes me feel uncomfortable as I might offend someone.  I respect good snow boarders who go down the slopes with the top of their board pointing down the hill.  People who skid down with their board perpendicular to the lift drive me nuts.  I need some of that snow they are scraping off the mountain to cut my edges in so I can turn and not end up at the Silver Cloud Hotel for six weeks.

I also almost got knocked off a cliff by a snowboarder at Whistler.  I was taking the green way down a slope, which in the summer is a service road.  It is relatively flat, and has a steep incline on one side and a drop off on the other.  Flat parts are really hard for snowboarders as they don't have poles to push them along.  This one boarder was getting up with his back to the flow of traffic.  He jerked his board back about four feet.  I had a choice: get hit by this guy or fall off the cliff.  I was lucky to find the middle ground and avoid both.  The downside was I started swearing, not at him, but just in general.  The Canadians don't allow swearing on the mountain.  They are so polite.