It was Christmas vacation 1979. My cousin’s Church Youth Group from Lufkin was making the long haul to Durango, Colorado. Purgatory Ski Resort played host to an East Texas avalanche of teenagers.
I never was shy when it came to sports. I played middle linebacker, third base and made myself learn a half-gainer off the high-dive. I decided it was safer than the painful frontward version. On summer vacation in 1983, at a Lake Conroe pool, I had just mastered two flips off the low board.
“Hey Mom! Watch this!”
I was pumped. In fact, I was a ball-like blur. It ended up being a two and a half, and I landed on my right ear. After the doctor laid the cotton patch over the hole in my eardrum, I put that little dive to pasture.
So when they handed me the snow skis, there was little to do but gather speed and crash. By the end of the second day my falls were less spectacular, but the conditions were turning poor--packed snow was becoming more like ice.
There’s virgin snow and then there’s the stuff by the trees. The trails were turning to crusty gray sheets, but over by the timber, the fluffy stuff whispered my name.
That’s fine, the snow is fine, until you lose your step and kiss the crispy bark. It made for a great parking lot story back on the bus where the frozen skiers began to thaw.
After reminding them where the best snow was, “I was whipping my way down the mountain, right next to the trees! Well, I caught an edge and tumbled head-first into a jagged pine.” (Then I pulled my goggles from around my neck--they were cracked in half.) “But everything was okay! It was alright! I WAS ALRIGHT! And right there, at the bottom of that same tree, right before I pulled myself up off the frozen tundra, I found THESE! (I pull out the pair of sunglasses I found trunk-side) “I put these on and kept on going! Sure, they’re missing an arm, but THEY GOT ME HOME!”
After years of skis, last year I ventured onto a snowboard. I will never go back. The board is so much harder to learn; the falls are brutal and I can’t remember being so exhausted. Those first trips down the mountain took forever, but on a snowboard it‘s you and and the mountain. On skis, it’s more like you’re riding two wooden crutches that like to wrestle.
This year, during my ski trip to Monarch Mountain, while waiting for my family to arrive, I took a day off from snowboarding and rented a snowmobile. It was pretty similar to riding a jet-ski, but the rocky cliffs had my number.
Follow-the-leader is the key on a snowmobile tour. The leader knows the terrain, the hidden rocks and cliffs. I should have been extra careful after the leader shattered his windshield in a snowdrift. But after three hours of staying in his tracks, I decided to make a loopty-loop at the top of this little slope to meet the group at the bottom.
I learned little slopes can be saddled with fifteen foot cliffs, as I sailed out into the clear mountain air. It was pretty for a few feet, until gravity raised it’s hand and called me down. Upon impact, my snowmobile was nose-down with a rag doll flying over the windshield--me. The major pain was coming, but I was bleeding before I hit the ground. Before flipping over the windshield, there was a little bit of a lip-plant. For several weeks I sported a gray, plexi-glass splinter in my lip, a testimony to follow-the-leader and my folly.
I hit the windshield so fast I don’t remember it, but landing on my knee, bent sideways like it was, and the way it popped, that part put me on the plane home. I saw an operation coming as I limped off the plane.
I was shocked to hear, “mild sprain” or strain, I don’t remember which. All I heard was mild. With the anti-inflammatories and the thoughts of twenty family members at the Colorado lodge, I was back on the plane by day’s end. My first ticket was $208, my second $360, but when the family gets together, it’s worth every penny.
