#74 accomplished

So it happened Sunday;
Despite some serious, coffee-impervious morning grogginess,
heavy snowfall during our drive and beyond freezing conditions
atop the mountain, we solidered on, with our 1980's model skis in tow.

I didn't notice until we were hunkered into our ski lift and being slowly pulled toward the summit that my skis had the words "light speed" enscribed on each one, each letter form bowed slightly forward to help with the concept. [clever.] Growing up in a generation of diet foods, I breathed a quick sigh of pure satisfaction knowing "light" to be the cozy cousin of "low". Oh jolly good. Wait. No. Nevermind. Light speed, says my slightly more intelligent self who attended science class and listened, is actually the fastest speed known to man. And indeed, compared with the hundreds of other skis I found sliding around this small, flat-topped snow station, mine were the very skinniest and proportionally the longest.

What does a girl from Maryland know about skis anyway?
Not enough to save her life.

On top of 12,000 feet of solid rock and earth topped with a slick coat of snow (and more mounting) with a couple of lightning fast boards attached to my feet, there's nothing left to do but to go down. And nothing I'd like to avoid more. Oh, and no poles. (My past, bad-ass Maryland-hill skier self says that they get in the way. But maybe, just maybe, they help with balance. )

Well I made it;
One good crack to the skull and a solid flip or two into a tree and down a short snow bank, but I made it, by the end of the day, back down to the valley of the living in Denver and to a un-threatening evening church service. My body still whole. Accomplished.

Despite the terror and frozen face, I don't think I'll stay away from the slopes for too long; something about the sore knee cap the next day that makes me feel invigorated about my "lightning fast" mortality and that, heck, life's either a daring adventure--or a crazy sunday trip to the mountains with skis you found for twenty bucks---or it's nothing.

the no-pole freak.