The “Hail” with Skiing

I went to a ski hill (Buck Hill in Burnsville, MN) on Monday, Jan 15, 2006 for the first time in my life. My excitement was not only due to the fact that I was doing it for the first time but because most of the guys that went with me were rookies too. So I was like “Yeah let’s go down the hill all at once and crash on top of each other” Well! that didn’t really happen but there were plenty of other exciting things that happened that night. Here are the highlights of the night.

• After spending about half hour trying to put on the ski, Prashant and I finally gave up and asked for help. All this time we were laughing our butts off as when one end went in the other slipped off. When I finally thought I had it on and got up, I had my bare feet on me with the ski two yards behind me. Man that was awesome!
• Prawol felt bad when he saw that Prashant couldn’t make it to the base of the baby hill from the lobby. So he thought of lending a helping hand. But too bad and too sad he got stuck himself without even getting a chance to rescue Prashant. They finally gave up, took off the ski, walked on the ski boots and put it on again. Hail the ski!
• When I finally managed to put the ski on I went to grab the rope-tow that would slide me up the hill and take me to the top for a descent. Of course, I fell. But I was a man enough to get up which included tangling of skis, five minutes of effort and a ‘poor fellow’ glance from probably a four year old. I finally made it to the top.
• Then came the most daring part not only ‘coz it was my first time, but also ‘coz I was way up there; I was scared; there were a lot of people there who I could crash into; there was a bump on the way that could get my flying in the air; I had a bad knee and above all it was slippery all the way down (crap!)
• Sigh of relief when I found out I only fell like three times before I got to the end of hill. Not bad huh!
• When I went up again, I saw three of my rookie buddies landing on top of each other with an innocent bystander in the pile. Oops!
• After going up and down the hill for about half a dozen time and numerous falls I decided to upgrade myself to an intermediate level. Boy! Was that a bad decision?
• I started to count how many times I fell but after a while I lost track. I, however, made it to the bottom of the hill without breaking a bone.
• The hardest part of skiing was not skiing or falling; it was getting up after I fell. My skis would tangle up, I would slip before I could even stand up and then there would be a little kid whizzing past me (bastard!). If I fell on my right side, I could be on my feet in about five minutes, which was not bad. But, if I fell on my left I couldn’t even get up because of my bad knee. So I would have to lay on my back before I untangled my ski, twist around to the other side and help myself up all this while I felt like a moron.
  
  In short, I found skiing to be appealing, daring, hilarious, comic, painful, thrilling, tempting, doable and embarrassing yet awesome.