There's No Bunny Like Snow Bunny

Yesterday I had the privilege and the pleasure to go skiing at Deer Valley with El Senor. This winter, my boss gave me ski tickets that he had won. He couldn't use them because he is a snowboarder and skiing is too rough on his knees. I don't know which resorts around here are good and what not, so as soon as I got the tickets, I got onto Google Talk to ask El Senor if Deer Valley was a good resort:

me: Have you ever gone skiing at Deer Valley?
El Senor: Nope. I'd like to, but it's expensive and I haven't had a chance till this year because they are a skis only resort.
me: I have two free passes. Want to go?
El Senor: Yes yes yes yes. Now I just need to figure out who to take with me.
me: You're a jerk.
El Senor: Through and through.

In the end, El Senor did choose to take me! I am so lucky to have him as a brother.

Skiing yesterday was a whole different experience from what I'm used to. The last time I went skiing was probably a decade ago. I skied for a couple of years when I was 14 and 15 at my local ski resort, Kamiskotia. Now, Ontario doesn't have any mountains. So Kamiskotia is really just a little ski hill. You get to the peak and choose which way to ski down, and you can be to the bottom in less than two minutes if you just go straight.

Deer Valley was different. First of all, it's the end of March and the temperature outside was in the 60s and 70s while we were there. I saw a woman skiing in a bikini top. You baked in the sun on the lifts and you had to ski fast to cool yourself down. By the afternoon, I ditched my toque and gloves. At about 1:00, El Senor asked if I wanted something to drink, saying, "Normally we'd get a hot chocolate..." I said, "Diet Coke! Please for the love, get me a Diet Coke! Something cold!" Compare this with skiing in sub-zero temperatures at Kamiskotia. As long as we're comparing it to Kamiskotia, however, I will say that skiing makes you want a poutine like none other, and Deer Valley, among all the delicacies that they serve, does not serve poutine. It's so unfair.

Second of all, somehow there are LOTS of peaks that you can ski down from, and LOTS of lifts, and you need to use maps and stuff. Or, in my case, you just need to follow your brother around because he just knows where he's going. (As a side note, when he was three years old, my mom would take him blueberry picking with her and she wouldn't pay attention to where they were going because she knew that no matter where they went, El Senor could always show her the way back to the car. He's just like that.) At Kamiskotia, all the lifts (all three of them?) lead to the top of the hill. Then you ski down the hill. Then you take a lift to the top again. It's easy.

I'm sure there were a couple other differences, but now I would like to report on what a world-class skier I am. El Senor tried to start me out with snowplowing and snowplow turns. But I discovered that skiing is like riding a bike---it actually just comes back naturally, so it was much more natural for me to make parallel turns rather than snowplow turns. I felt in-control and confident on all the green runs that we started out with (we took a piste called "Homeward Bound" to a piste called "Ontario," which I thought was very appropriate). I was thrilled by the fact that after the first couple of hours, El Senor had fallen but I hadn't. At all.

Of course, if I hadn't fallen at all during the whole day, that would have meant that I didn't challenge myself. But I did challenge myself. Again and again and again. And every time I "challenged" myself, El Senor just stood back and laughed. One time, one of my skis popped off, and a very kind six-year-old stopped by my lost ski to make sure that I could get to it without any difficulty and to make sure I was okay. That was kind/humiliating of him.

When I had challenged myself enough, El Senor decided to challenge me a little. Like this one time, when he didn't say anything but simply skied over to a double-blue-square piste. I think he thought that he'd just slip it past me, but I noticed right away. I also noticed when I fell and rolled and spun and rolled and fell for a good 200 feet. Another skier caught up to me and said, "Wow. You were going faster than I was!" I said, "Yes. I took the shortcut." After falling two more times on that same piste, I felt like a master.

Not master enough to do a black diamond, however. El Senor said, "You should do a black diamond just to say that you did a black diamond." I told him I had no interest in telling people that I'd done a black diamond. Then we took the lift up to the top and El Senor told me to "turn left." So I turned left and all I saw around us were black diamonds. But he took out his camera and said that he just wanted to take a picture. "Go a little farther!" he said. "Go a little farther!" So I went to where the picture would be most scenic. We snapped the shot and then El Senor continued in the direction of the black diamonds. I told him that they were all black diamonds over there, but he said that we'd check to see if there were any double-blue-squares, which, to be honest, I wasn't that interested in, either. In the end, we were at the top of a black diamond (no double-blue-squares in sight) and if we were to get to any of the easier trails, we'd have to climb back uphill a little. El Senor thinks that he's so smart, but the truth is, I KNOW he did it on purpose. He didn't slip anything past me.

Since going down a black diamond had to be better than climbing up ten feet to get to the other trails, I told him that I'd go ahead and do it, but if I was injured, he had to pay anything that my insurance didn't pay for.

But you know what? I didn't actually fall as much on the black diamond as I had on the double-blue-square. I only fell once, and it was only for 100 feet. And I had lots of chances to get off the black diamond and go on a double-blue-square, but I figured as long as I was already doing the black diamond and not dying, and as long as El Senor was going to cover the medical bills, I may as well keep doing the black diamond. Move over, Kathy Kreiner. I'm a pro now.