Grays On Trays

From one of my companions on the chair lift today:

“Yeah, I got a late start on learning how to ski. This is my second season. I’m 14 now.”

Writing in the Providence Journal, Mark Patinkin channels Dave Barry with an ode to cold. Here’s an excerpt:

Most people who live in New England like to escape to places like Florida in the winter.

Then there are the few who, in the face of freezing weather, become irrational. They go to where it’s even colder.

These people are commonly referred to as “skiers.”

There is a subspecies that is even odder. They ski when it’s below zero.

They say last weekend was one of the coldest in New England in years. It was 10 below in Vermont and New Hampshire with a wind-chill of perhaps 20 below.

So I went skiing.

You may ask, “Why?”

I have no idea.

Patinkin enjoys skiing, so he’s milking the apparent “insanity” of skiing for all its worth. By the way, most of what he says applies to snowboarding as well, with this exception:

Remember the stiff, mechanical way the robot walked in the original The Day the Earth Stood Still? That’s how skiers walk as they clomp down the stairs of the base-lodge to buy their $75 lift ticket.

Count that as an advantage for snowboarding: You can actually walk in your boots.

Patinkin also makes a riff on reckless snowboarders. But he’s talking about his teenaged sons, which means that their attitude stems from their age more than anything else. I wonder if Patinkin knows any snowboarders his own age.

Here’s a link to the article, though you may need to sign up for a free account to read it.

The challenges of learning how to snowboard or ski have long been fodder for comics. You’re dressed up in funny clothing, giving up something you’re competent in (walking) for motions that are unusual and unknown, and there’s always the opportunity, in slipping-on-the-banana-peel style, for aches and pains. Early in the days of snowboarding for example, Dave Barry reported on his adventures. He reported that the day after his time on the board, he went to a coffee-and-Advil diet.

While en route to a short trip away from the frozen tundra to the Sunbelt, I listened to a comedy channel on the airline entertainment system. The comedian repeated one old story about learning how to ski.

He explained that when he was 48, his wife decided that they should take up skiing. He started out with his exasperation of taking up a sport at that age. Here are a few of the lines that I remember from his routine:

• “I told my wife that she should just throw me out the third-story window. I would get the same experience and she would save money the lift ticket.”
• “I got hit in the head by the chairlift. It knocked me cold. I called the insurance company about it, and the guy on the other end asks ‘So you got hit by a chair?’ ‘Yes,’ I told him; I stood up, looked around, and got hit in the head by the chair.’ He told me ‘You got hit by a chair? You’re a moron. We’re not going to cover a pre-existing condition.”

So what does this say about our attitudes towards learning how to slide? A number of things: fear of the humiliation that can come from being incompetent at a new task; fear of injury and–here’s the one part of these routines that has a kernel of useful truth–not taking yourself too seriously. Especially when you start out, you have to leave your pride behind if you want to find bliss on the slopes.