Bode Miller I'm not.

Check me out in my crazy yellow coat! (Thanks to Ronit for lending it to me.)

Does everyone remember the story of my first ski adventure? I don't, but Summer told me all about it when my brain was functioning again. It was at Sundown in Dubuque, IA, where there are no mountains. I apparently hit my head on the ground at some point in the first thirty or so minutes of bunny hill action, which caused all sorts of problems for the chaperones. Summer says I asked all sorts of funny questions and when I didn't remember the other kids from school she decided to take me to her mom in the lodge and get me checked out. That resulted in a fun ambulance ride (for her at least, I don't remember) and a CAT scan. Diagnosis: mild concussion.

One might think after an experience like that, the victim would avoid skiing ever again. Well, not me! I tried again in Austria in 2000 and also in 2004-2005, when I went skiing a whopping three times. That was major. So by this point, I've been a total of 5 times including the concussion run. My colleague and friend Natalie invited me to join the riotous group going for a ski weekend in Pennsylvania's Pochonos. I decided it was high time to try out my skillz again and went along with the 14 other people she had organized for the weekend.

Some of the crew in front of our rental house

We skiied on Saturday at Camelback Resort near Scotrun, PA. It had a good bunch of green (easiest) and double green (2nd easiest) runs, so I was feeling good about the whole thing. A girl named Jennifer decided to ski with me for the day, so we got our rental equipment and headed off to warm up on the bigger bunny hill. Both of us did really well there and after a couple times down the hill we decided we were ready for something more challenging. We rode halfway up the mountain to the Upper Moore's Ramble, which connected to the Turkey Trot, both of which were single greens. The Upper Moore's was all good...we did some synchronized side-to-side skiing (totally not consciously coordinated, but that's just how it turned out) on the steeper parts and then we reached the Turkey Trot. I was still feeling a bit unsteady and freaked out by any sort of speed, which improved as the day went on. The first time we stood at the top of the Turkey Troy though, both Jennifer and I said, "Turkey Trot my ass!" It was a curvy, steep slope with a little sheen on ice in the center, which we needed to ski across to continue with our synchronized side-to-side switchbacks. We were scared. I managed to make the first run with just one fall, but it wasn't bad. We decided we could do that same run again and went back up the lift. This time my false confidence in my abilities was thrown in my face with a solid wipe out that hurt my shoulder. I managed to stand up, which is a real challenge for me, and continue.

We did that same run several more times because we were a little to scared to go further up the mountain and have to connect to a *gasp* double green! Then, as we stood at the bottom of our little hill, a mom with her two kids came past us and said something about this being the hardest green they'd been on that day. That was when we decided we could try one of the others, and they were fine! I had another decent face-plant pole-flying wipe out on the Nile Mile, but otherwise it was all good.

Then it came to the last run of the evening. I wasn't sure I wanted to go down again because my legs were all tired, but my companions convinced me to go one more time. Jennifer, Karla and I skied up to the chair lift waiting line and I turned around to watch the chair approach. Unfortunately I didn't see the chair because there was a random guy standing directly between me and it! I don't know where he came from or why the guy who was supposed to be controlling the line let him ski into the chair's path, but there he was. He was close enough to me that his skis were inbetween mine. I was standing in the middle of the three of us and had nowhere to escape to. The chair kept coming (not sure what the stupid lift operators were doing at this point, but they didn't stop the lift until WAY too late) and the guy sat in my spot. As it swept forward and picked up Jennifer and Karla, it sort of pushed me and lifted me, after which it promptly caught the chain and was propelled forward at frightening speed with me plastered to the front, much like a cartoon character on the grill of a speeding vehicle. Having no cartoon writers to save me , I of course fell. Maybe five or six feet? Maybe more? Not sure. Suddenly I was on the ground, my equipment displayed in a yard sale. The fall knocked the wind out of me and I couldn't draw breath for a second or two. The lift finally came to a halt with my friends a good 15 yards past me, swearing and yelling. The line guy stood on the loading platform and stared at me. "Are you ok?" he asked. Made no move to help me up or to gather my stuff, so I did that on my own. I climbed back up to the loading platform and tried to get my skis back on, but I was so flustered and annoyed that I couldn't. After maybe 20 seconds of trying I muttered some obscenities under my breath, picked up my skis and stalked off, but not before admonishing the line guy for not even helping me up or apologizing for his failure to do his job. He looked at me with disbelief and then apologized to the line of people BEHIND me, but not to me. I wanted to spit on him. But I didn't. I put my skis back on, got back in line and got onto the lift successfully, swearing and muttering the whole time. My friends were still at the top, discussing my fate. We skiied down to the lodge and that was the end. Yes, I will go again.

At the top of the Nile Mile (before the chair lift incident)

Besides the skiing there were lots of other adventures in PA, including scary tree-lined dirt track roads, 5 mile per hour 20 degree turns all the way to the mountain, wrong directions, a late night stop at Perkins and cocktails. But that's going to have to be for another day, as this post is already inordinately long.

Ski partner Jennifer, who had this interesting habit of "resting" on the side of the hill every chance she got. Here she's also attempting to catch snow flakes.