Thursday we all to off to Voss for a little skiing. I thought
it would be fun. I thought it would be fun. I forgot that it
was up high and uncontrollably fast. I've retold the story of
my ski trip in Squaw Valley in the mid 90's on the 2nd of July
so many times I forgot all the bad parts. Cara and the kids
wanted to skip the kiddie training slope and go straight to
the green. We picked up skis, boots, poles and helmets. We
bought lift passes. We headed down a short hill to the lift.
Well, Maxwell made it down. Zara and I made it halfway down.
Cara took of her skis and walked down. Shades of things to
come. While I was waiting for Cara, Zara and Maxwell grabbed a
lift and took it up the hill. Maxwell had a map and a plan.
I convinced Cara to put her skis back on and we caught the lift
as well.
The lift was where the first memories started coming back. The
ski lift is terrifying to someone with acrophobia as bad as
mine. Absoloutely terrifying. I'd romanticized skiing so much
in my head I'd completely forgotten how one gets to the top of
the hill. But Maxwell was going to be a natural Norwegian
taking to skiing like a duck to water and Zara and Cara would
follow his confident success to their own. I was in a state of
heightened awareness driven by terror and adrenaline when I
reached the top of the mountain and saw Maxwell and Zara
waiting there. To the right was a black slope. To the left was
a red one, with jumps. But I didn't know that yet. I just knew
that I'd survived the ski lift. Only slowly did I realize that
the kids weren't waiting out of courtesy, but because they
didn't know how to go down. There was no green.
Fight or flight had already kicked in for me hard core on the
ski lift, but I knew we still had to work the problem. So I
got out the map and figured the shortest route to the green.
It was down the red slope with the jumps.
.
.
.
.
Writing this post has gotten too stressful though, so I'll just
leave at we all made it down safely after several hours.
Nothing broken, just lots of bruises and exhaustion from so
much adrenaline. Cara and I both fell asleep on the trainride
back to Bergen. We did take some
pictures
though.
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