My life and other mishaps

I went skiing last week (for the first time in nine years) and I have come to a conclusion: I cannot take part in every sport I think I might be good at! After six whipe-outs, falling off the ski lift as I dismounted from my chair, and catching a cold, I realized that I should stick to the rink, not the slopes. I had a kick-ass time, but maaaan do I suck at skiing! I hadn't been since I was 13, and even then I had no idea what I was doing and even saw one of my friends snowboard off a cliff and had to testify in court a year later as to what happened that crazy night. You'd think that would be enough to turn me off the entire concept of skiing, but not me! 10 of us went for the day (some of the others didn't ski, but stayed at my friend's Dad's place near the slopes) and one of the guys helped me for the first couple of runs down the 'baby slope'. My first goal was to learn how to stop and that took a while. I thought it'd be simliar mechanics to stopping on skates, but it wasn't. I must have looked like a twat the first few times. Then I had to learn how to turn and that also took a while. Then I had to learn how to use my poles as pivots, and that actually took very little time! By the third run I had the stopping down pat and the turning was a little better. So I sent my friend off to the bigger hills because I could tell he wanted to do something challenging. I stayed on the small slope until I mastered the turning (there are lots of turns and drops on the large runs and I didn't want to put myself, and others, at risk). After about 5 more runs I went over to the big hill and by that time it was dark and the view of...well as far as the eye can see...was amazing. Everything was silent and still and all I could hear were my skis tearing through the snow. I felt like I was the only one on the slopes; it was pretty incredible. I did one more big hill run, ate a bit, then went back to the small slope because I was losing energy. On the baby hill lift I saw my friend try snowboarding and watched him completely whipe-out and saw his grimmacing face and laughed a little. What I didn't know is he had really hurt his thumb and had to go back to the lodge! So I wasn't laughing so much afterwards. I eventually got a little over-confident with my turning abilities and decided to try the big hill one last time. I made my way over, got on the lift, listened to the other guys on the chair talk about hills in Alberta and how it takes 45 minutes to get down the really big hills, and then we reached the top. This is where I fell off as I was dismounting and one of my skiis snapped off and I had to get it quickly because other people were getting off the lift. I knew this was a pretty ominous start to the run (my right boot also felt a little loose). I started down the first drop of the hill I had done earlier in the day and that was fine. Then I started losing control down the second drop and my left ski came off again and I tumbled down a little and had to climb back up sideways to get my ski and put it back on my boot. I then snow-plowed down the rest of that portion of the hill and cut over to the baby hill (there was a gap between the hills to change over) and went to the bottom. But I didn't want that to be my last run considering how much I had accomplished that day. So I went back up the small hill lift, went down half-way, cut over to the bottom half of the big hill, and made a nice recovery going side to side and stopping perfectly at the bottom. And that was my day on the hill! Lots o' fun. We all met up at 8:30 (after 7 hours of skiing) and went back to the lodge to smoke up and forget the day. We played a game called 'draw a picture of an animal without looking at the other person's rendition and then compare drawings'. It was hilarious. Our first animal was an elephant and my apparently looked like a dog throwing up. Another drawing looked like...well it wasn't an owl. We drew a gorilla, a giraffe, a frog, and other animals. My skunk looked like a snake crawling between two rocks because I was drawing it from a birds-eye view...for some reason. It was so much fun because you're concentrating so hard and it's even funnier because of the state you're in! Good times.

Other than that, my life has been fairly dull. Got back to Guelph a week ago, classes started on Monday and that's really about it. I'm taking some interesting econ courses: one talks about how economic actions in Canada impacts the rest of the world, and vice versa; another discusses the history of the world economy from 1850 to the present (exciting!!!); and the third covers the economics of health care and the inefficiencies of Medicare...in economic form! I'm also doing an intro to philosophy course. And talking about those courses has really bored me!

I'm going to make some dinner now. I just had a four hour power nap and now I'm at the stage where I don't know if I should have a light snack and go back to bed, or make a big dinner and go to bed later. Decisions!

Can you all come back one more time to go to the Trash please? Thanks. Next Wednesday? Sounds good! Glad you thought of it. See you then.

David