For about 30 years, I was one of the cool people – I was a skier. I didn’t learn to ski until I was about 30; really late. I secretly envied the skiers in college – their cool gear and red cheeks and money – because skiing was really expensive. I finally started skiing when I was in charge of arranging training meetings for the industrial hygienists at my old company. The Safety people always held their conferences in March/April. The Environmental people took Sept/October. And poor second-class Industrial Hygiene was left to choose from winter or summer. Everyone vacations in summer and budgets run out in November. So I decided to hold our meetings in January. We got first dibs on a fresh budget and if we were going to have meetings in January I figured we ought to go where people go in January – a ski resort!
The first two years we went to Copper Mountain, CO. Then Keystone. Then Breckenridge. Then we had a rash of people with altitude sickness and one broken collarbone. So we started going to Park City, Utah – lower altitude skiing but collarbones were still at risk. I look back now on those years with great fondness. Whole groups of us learned to ski because of our business trips. We held 4 hours of morning meetings. Then people got the afternoon to ski, shop or whatever and then came back for an evening session. Because I was the meeting organizer, I also got comp nights and stayed extra days. For six years I skied, but never on the East Coast. “It’s so icy in the East,” I heard. But eventually I started some PA skiing and then VT when my brother got a condo at Okemo. For all of that, I remained a pretty solid intermediate skier – with no real desire to get markedly better. Over my 30-year of skiing I ran only about three black diamond runs – and felt like superstar.
I have hung up my skis now. I’ve “aged-out” – my choice. I don’t ski often enough to maintain good competency and I think more about keeping all my joints working these days. Technically, I probably hung my skis up about three years ago, but I didn’t get rid of my equipment because, you never know… But I did know; I just wasn’t ready to stop being one of the cool people. Now when I tell people I’m going to VT for vacation and they ask if I ski, I say, “No, but I’m going to snowshoe” – as if that still makes me cool. I don’t know if this is true at all ski resorts, but at Okemo – where my brother and his wife ski patrol – snowshoe people can hike all over the mountain for free. So I can still be out with the cool people. Cool by association.
The first two years we went to Copper Mountain, CO. Then Keystone. Then Breckenridge. Then we had a rash of people with altitude sickness and one broken collarbone. So we started going to Park City, Utah – lower altitude skiing but collarbones were still at risk. I look back now on those years with great fondness. Whole groups of us learned to ski because of our business trips. We held 4 hours of morning meetings. Then people got the afternoon to ski, shop or whatever and then came back for an evening session. Because I was the meeting organizer, I also got comp nights and stayed extra days. For six years I skied, but never on the East Coast. “It’s so icy in the East,” I heard. But eventually I started some PA skiing and then VT when my brother got a condo at Okemo. For all of that, I remained a pretty solid intermediate skier – with no real desire to get markedly better. Over my 30-year of skiing I ran only about three black diamond runs – and felt like superstar.
I have hung up my skis now. I’ve “aged-out” – my choice. I don’t ski often enough to maintain good competency and I think more about keeping all my joints working these days. Technically, I probably hung my skis up about three years ago, but I didn’t get rid of my equipment because, you never know… But I did know; I just wasn’t ready to stop being one of the cool people. Now when I tell people I’m going to VT for vacation and they ask if I ski, I say, “No, but I’m going to snowshoe” – as if that still makes me cool. I don’t know if this is true at all ski resorts, but at Okemo – where my brother and his wife ski patrol – snowshoe people can hike all over the mountain for free. So I can still be out with the cool people. Cool by association.