SURVIVING DOWNHILL SKIING
I live! And that's saying a lot considering the beating I took while downhill skiing this past weekend. Holy moly! Ben and I went both Saturday and Sunday and midway through Sunday, I was feeling it big time.

Saturday went really well. I took Adam's mother, Ben and Jeff (~bigjeff5) up to the Alyeska ski resort for a half-day of skiing and snowboarding. Jeff was new to snowboarding and had a tough time. Thankfully, Ben acted as his mentor and helped him out. We met up with John (~CryoCon) and some random guy named Garret on the ski-lift who is apparently a friend of Ben's and in a local band. (We arranged to see him perform this Friday at the Woodshed.) Adam's mom and I hit it off but she stuck to the lower mountain. John is a wild and crazy skiier that when combined with Ben, air and mogules makes one hilarious ski partner. Ben and I stayed close b/c not only is he a good snowboarder, he is also a great skiier. He probably spent 1/3rd of the day skiing backwards in front of me just for kicks. I definitely saw improvement in my skiing and started hitting intermediate slopes (blue square).

Sunday, I returned to the slopes with Collin, Ben, Adam, his mother and John for more skiing. I was pretty tired that day (after a Saturday night of goofing off with Ben, Adam, Jeff and Matt over beers and boardgames) but went to the top of the mountain to take on intermediate-advanced runs. I peformed well for a little while, then turned my attention to a mogule-filled trench that Adam, Ben and I thought would be good practice (not quite black diamond, but more challenging than blue square). I did pretty well, in my opinion, but the truth is I was falling fairly often and my legs were tired.

Then, there was the epic "unwanted air" fall that finished me off. I was skiing down a relatively easy area, not paying attention, when I hit a mogule and both skis left the ground. Who knows how much air I got, probably not a lot, but it caught me off guard. I didn't land it, instead I smashed into a ski that should have popped off my foot, but didn't. The ski was then jerked behind my body and caught my other leg as I began to slide downhill on my back, head-first. I could see John and Ben among all the flying powder and actually started to laugh. But then, I didn't stop sliding downhill and despite my laughing, I realized my thigh was hurting pretty bad. I finally came to a stop a good distance from where I hit the mogule and dragged myself back onto my skis. While it was pretty funny at the time, I was feeling it the next day and decided to go buy a ski helmet. Next weekend, I'll do it all over again but this time I'll be well-rested!