Well, everyone, now that Christmas is over, I think it’s time to settle down and lie low for a while. Really just to calm down a bit from the holidays, take a little time to recharge your batteries, and prepare for other things. Like skiing!
That’s right, after having a lovely Christmas, our family’s holidays weren’t over yet. We were in the works of planning a really super awesome trip to Giant’s Ridge Ski Resort. (In Biwabik, MN.) A few months back (on Halloween) our family realized that if we bought a season pass before the hype for skiing began, we could save more money on skiing if we went on a trip longer than four days. After we set our dates to stay at the Lodge (which is a hotel right at the ski hill) we had to come up with a plan. The week we were going to go skiing would be the first week we came back to online school after Christmas break. We would travel on January 3rd, and ski from Monday to Friday, and also leave that same day. Five days. Hey, it would be our longest ski trip. And I’m not complaining.
Fast forward from Christmas to the 2nd (don’t worry, nothing blog-worthy happened, just the same old things), I was being my normal self: procrastinating and avoiding packing for our ski trip. I was trying to spend as much time on my PS4 before we left (I couldn’t bring it with me on our trip) which eventually led to some minor conflict. So I got off the PS4 and packed. It didn’t take long, and now that I’m thinking about it, I think I overpacked.
The next day, January 3rd, was definitely a complicated one. The perk of having a big family is that it makes trips like this one fun, but the downside is that when you have more people, everything just falls into chaos. Some people sat and lounged all day (no names), some worked nearly all day so we could all leave on time. Eventually, through the chaos, we managed to leave at about 2:30 in the afternoon. That eventually left us with a car drive that was going to be about 4 hours. I, fortunately, was lucky enough to have one of the best seats in our van: one of the middle seats. The car ride wasn’t that exciting, but at least I got to watch a movie and take a nap on the ride. We got to The Lodge at about 6 pm; which by that time the chairlifts on the hill had already closed. Nothing much else happened that night. We ate dinner, and everyone did their own thing. That night before I went to bed, my little brother had already been sleeping there for a bit, so I slept on the couch.
The next morning was a long one. I had constantly woken up during the night, and I eventually fell asleep, back and forth, and back again. Until I finally decided to get up at about 7:30 in the morning to do my school work. (We were still online.) After I had gotten some school work done, I decided that it was finally time to start skiing. See, the nice thing about having a hotel right on the ski hill is that you have the luxury of skiing whenever you want. Literally. If I want to ski all I have to do is put my stuff on and go outside. It’s a really nice alternative to being in a hotel that's 5 miles away, where everyone in the family goes skiing at once. That morning I skied for a couple of hours with my older sister. (Having a ski buddy is really nice.) After a couple of runs on the easy hills, my sister and I decided to take a run at some of the harder hills. We eventually got to skiing on one of the black diamonds (the hardest difficulty of ski hill) which ended up being a lot more fun than I was expecting. Later that day I went on some more black diamonds on the north side of the hill with my older brother and sister. (Foreshadowing…) That night was just as exciting as the night before, only this time, I stayed up till 1:00 in the morning watching the snow tractors groom the snow.
Tuesday went a lot like Monday, only that, instead of skiing with my sister, I was skiing with my dad. We explored many parts of the hill and eventually got back to the north side. We skied down the hill “Rocky Top” a couple of times till I decided to go down one of the black diamonds called “Alta”. I made it down just fine (I like to go down the hill really fast) and when I came back up, I decided to try going down a black diamond that I had never been on before. It was called “2002”. My dad for once decided NOT to go down the black diamond with me (he usually never does this since he likes the challenge) and he went down “Sochi” an easier, but still difficult hill. As I was going down the hill, I realized that I was going a lot faster than I usually go, and then in front of me, I saw two different paths. A path that said “CAUTION” and a path that didn’t. I didn’t really know which way to go and before I got to choose, my skis wobbled, and all of a sudden I was in the air. I did some kind of flip and then I landed on the ground, which also smacked my head onto the ground. I had just fallen. And it’s actually pretty cool to look back at what happened. After I recovered I made my way back to the chairlift, and I eventually got back.
Wednesday was a weird day. Instead of going straight to the harder hills, I decided to take it easy on myself, and I went on some easier hills. I had developed a kind of “going fast PTSD” and I took on a different way of approaching skiing. By doing the snake. When you do the snake, it allows you to slow down a bit while skiing, without losing much momentum. All you really do to do the snake is just turn in a continuous “S” shape. And that's all I did that day. Going slower, taking it a bit easier on myself; just doing some kind of major reset. Later, I decided to ski with my little sister, which made it a bit easier to go slower, since I had to go slower for her. That night I finally decided to sleep in the bed that was actually assigned for me, not the couch. I slept really well.
Thursday I was starting to jump back to my normal state of going on black diamonds, but all throughout the entire run I would always do the “S”. I realized it actually looked pretty cool if you decided to sort of drift the turns (like in car racing), and it was actually, so I used that method throughout the day. My older sister and I were skiing together on some harder hills, near the Helsinki Chair, when my little sister decided to come with us. We still skied in the same area, but we just skied on other runs that weren’t black diamonds. At one point we tried to go on this one run called “Grenoble” which had lots of mini bumps in the main larger hill, but somehow we veered left and ended up on “Cortina”. My little sister ended up falling on the entrance to “Cortina Pass” and since I was behind her, I was able to help her up and we eventually got back to the Helsinki Chair.
For about 10 minutes we had lost my older sister (foreshadowing…), but we eventually found her with my dad. We all decided to finally go on “Grenoble”, which was actually pretty fun. When we were going up the chairlift we were discussing which ski run we would be going down. When we eventually got off the chairlift I thought I heard a faint scream, but I shrugged it off. When my dad, older sister, and I finally noticed my little sister, we started to laugh. (Don’t do this to your siblings; it’s extremely mean). There was only one place she could have gone if she didn’t come up the hill. Down the chairlift. (Okay it was super funny.) My older sister and I speedily skied down the black diamond “Helsinki” and once we got to the bottom we waited at the bottom for my little sister. (We were laughing so hard.) Once she got there, the ski personnel made sure she got off the chairlift. She was done for the day. The thing is, no one in our family had ever gone down the chairlift before, and we all wanted to know what the experience was like. That night before I went to bed, my parents all of a sudden announced that we were going to ski an extra day since some friends were going to be skiing as well.
Friday was the day I skied the most. I skied about a total of 9 hours that day. And it was great. I tried to go down as many runs as I possibly could, and it didn’t disappoint. There were only a few runs I couldn't go on, mainly because of time. Giant’s Ridge was open till 8pm, which coincidentally let me ski with both friends and family. And even when evening came, I skied all the way till the chair lifts closed. That’s all that happened. Nothing that special like accidents; just lots and lots of great skiing. That night I slept on the couch (my older brother was going to prank my little brother, I had to have no part in it) and the next morning I shifted to my usual bed.
Saturday morning was a quiet one. Lots of people were sleeping, which gave me the opportunity to ski lots that morning. I was skiing with our friends again, so all I went on were some easy runs. My older sister eventually came out, so we went on some runs till we had to pack and leave. Packing took a lot longer than we expected it to take, but once we were ready, we loaded our van and left. We left at around 1:00 pm, which actually let us get home at around 5:30 that evening. That was nice since I had to catch up on some school work that night.
And, that’s it! Those were probably the most important and exciting things that happened during our EPIC ski trip.
Um… have a nice day! See you soon! Hope you enjoyed it!
Tootles, David
AKA WAKWIR (Wannaskan Almanac Kid Writer-in-Residence)
P.S. Here's a list of all the runs I skied on:
Black Diamonds
Nagano, Helsinki, 2002, Helsinki Race, Alta, Whiteface, and Snowbasin
Blue Squares
Rocky Top, Solitude, Calgary, Sochi, Deer Valley, Cortina, Cortina Pass, Sarajevo, Sarajevo Pass, Grenoble, Squaw Valley, Lower Squaw Valley, Whistler(It doesn't show up on the map) Chamonix, Innsbruck, and Innsbruck Race.
Green Circles
Upper Melbourne, Melbourne, Placid, Easy Way, Sunshine, Cat Track, Park City, and Val D'isere.
On This Day
Remembering You
Kim
ReplyDeleteI was worried about you for quite a while.
But you made like a snake: kept a low profile.
Excellent post!
Burma shave
Excellent, WAKWIR! Chaos is a life-force; it spawns in family.
ReplyDeleteYou must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.
Friedrich Nietzsche
I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.
W. Somerset Maugham
Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos.
Mary Shelly
In chaos, there is fertility.
Anais Nin
DeleteOut of the chaos of doh come dohnuts.
Homer Simpson
"Hit the slopes"-- are you being funny? We live in Roseau County, the only county in Minnesota with just two slopes to its name, one of which is a vertical glacial ditch adjoining an old shelter house (that's frequently vandalized) that dead-ends into some vertically interred railroad ties at its bottom, and Campbell's Beach Head, west of Roseau, which is merely a westerly mirage of elevation from State Highway 89 that one ascends without even realizing it. It's altitude doesn't affect engine performance nor acceleration of heartbeat -- nor anticipation of a day's skiing fun, but rather, elicits endless exclamations of, "ARE WE THERE YET???" as one looks hopelessly for it, the GPS answering, "You have reached your destination on your left . . . on your right . . . on your left . . ."
ReplyDeleteNo sir, the slopes where we live, are road ditches and fields, on 'sleds, skis, and snowboards' pulled, in the beginning, by horses, then tractors and old cars, and later snowmobiles -- the latter the answer to it all. "Who needs a stinkin' slope?"
Good post all the same. I like your youthful voice.