Skiing

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.