There are colorful activities and then there are colorful activities. If you’re referring to holding court after a few beers, yakking it up as a group during bad video night or bar hopping on a tropical vacation, yes, I have been a very solid and entertaining representative of those colorful activities.
But if you’re referring to the more physically demanding or daring activities like skiing, skydiving, jet skiing and the like, no, I am not the poster boy for these things. Now, more than ever. I do regularly work out and go running when the weather’s nice but those are fairly normal activities, well within the scope of my abilities. But other things….
I’ve never been great at balance and have a weird thing about needing to always be grounded in some fashion. This explains why certain activities have been tried by me, failed utterly by me and finally condemned by me, often never to be attempted again. Don’t. Ask. Me.
In the late ’70’s in high school, I tried skiing for the first time. Slipping on the boots of discomfort, I felt akin to Frankenstein, clomping around, feeling ready to fall over– and I wasn’t even on the skis yet. I spent all my time attached to the tow rope, sliding awkwardly down the bunny hill until I picked up the slightest bit of speed, which–I was certain –was seconds away from turning into warp speed, so I allowed gravity to help complete the sloppy fall I’d begun ten minutes earlier. And so it went, back and forth and I hated every minute of it. I didn’t have the coordination, temperament or patience for it. Ten years later, a couples Colorado skiing trip opportunity came up. Being in my late ’20’s, I couldn’t very well be the grumpy old man who never does anything or go anywhere (I was still saving that charming nuance) and Linda wanted to go as it was her friends, so what the hell. I think there were six of us total. Some flew there, some lived there and we all rented a cottage of some sort and were there for a long weekend. Times were had (I think). I’m not sure because of the balance, the contrasting memories. I’m not sure who else was even on the trip or if I spent much time with them socially. They’re a blur. That’s the part of the trip when I *wasn’t* thinking I was going to fly off a cliff on skis. So they don’t stand out.
The country was truly beautiful. Trees, mountains, just exquisite. I remember that and leaping off a ski lift, managing to get up on the skis, facing a mindblowing mountain landscape, felt a fear of heights kick in, meandering a short distance on skis, speeding up TOO FAST, going down, getting up, rinse, repeat. You kind of have to keep “getting back on the horse” in this situation particularly, because you have to get down the mountain. And I did for a bit, but then I realized A) I’m missing some great scenery with all this slapstick and B) it’ll be faster if I walk down the mountain.
I suppose we flew home after that. Lovely mountains. I’d love to go back some day and not ski there. We have now encapsulated the entirety of my skiing history, as I am a man of infrequent action.
Next time we dip into this area, it’ll be all about water sports because the thing IS.
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