Mocked By Plastic Deer

After informing new acquaintances that I am from Colorado, the first question they ask without fail is "so, you do you ski or do you board?" This question never seemed just to me- where is the "neither" option? Yet, being presented with an either/or scenario, I typically opt with the former and identify myself as a skier. I usually leave out the part where I am one of those skiers that makes four-year-old children look like Olympic athletes by comparison and cause those with higher aptitudes for the sport (essentially, everyone else on the run at the time) to sharpen their senses in my presence as I tend to unintentionally cause a lot of accidents.

The motivating factors to actually get me to ski are scant. Usually, I am convinced by friends and begrudgingly head to the ski rental shop where my mind begins to cloud over with a sense of dread at the day to follow. The causes of the aforementioned dread range from fear that my hands and feet which already have poor circulation will incur frostbite and require amputation from the insane cold and wind to the simple fear of hitting an ice patch (which tend to comprise the ski runs at Eldora) and falling over dead. Of course, there is always the fear of hitting a renegade tree like Sonny Bono. The list goes on, but you can use your imagination to come up with the rest of my ski-induced fears. I'll just say I've thought of basically all scenarios.

I'm not sure of the exact basis from which my ski-related fears stem. I could trace it back to my childhood days, when my parents enrolled me in ski school. At some point during the lessons, my little 6-year-old self decided she had had enough and booked it out of there to find Mommy and Daddy- an excursion which failed and reduced me to a fit of tears and a sense of abandonment. If my timorous nature did not stem from that instance, perhaps it came from an incident which occurred a couple of years ago in the infamous "Fun Gully" run at Eldora. Things were going surprisingly well for me that day- I had not caused anyone to wipe out in a desperate attempt to avoid hitting me as I swerved down the runs and I had not injured myself. The combination of these two things led me to acquire a faulty sense of overconfidence. As you can likely infer from the name "Fun Gully," it is a green run designed for little kids with tiny jumps and creepy, plastic deer watching as you weave through the trees. 

My friends and I had gone down Fun Gully a couple of times without incident. At the end of our trip, when Eldora was about to close, my friend and I opted to take the Fun Gully path one more time. My confidence boosted by lack of negative incidents during the rest of the day, I decided to pick up my speed a little bit over the mini "jumps" along the gully (if you can even call them jumps- they were more like slight raises of snow about 6 inches tall. I probably shouldn't say that- it makes my situation even more pathetic). Well, it turns out my skills had not actually improved- I hit one of the bumps at a slight angle and went flying, landing directly onto my left shoulder. 

My friends laughing at me was only made worse as I could feel the steely-cold stares of the plastic deer as they mocked me while I was down. Anyways, the outcome was Marisa in physical therapy to try and set her shoulder straight and it never entirely healed. I cannot express how overjoyed I was when Fun Gully was closed during my most recent ski trip. 

Don't do it! (Photo from staticflikr.com)