This weekend I went on a young adult snow retreat in the mountains. It was a blast. I think it was a blast because this is one of the first retreats I’ve been on in a while where I’ve just gone to go and had no one there I was trying to impress. I could just be myself.
Unfortunately just being myself brought some interesting things to light in the car ride up that I thought was already common knowledge. I was a home schooler growing up, and to top that off, I was in a home schooler band. If that were not the essence of geeky….having an eye patch while being young and in a home school band is. I wore it because I had bad vision, not because I wanted to. The boys I rode up with discovered this tidbit of information and ran with it. When we got to the retreat we did a quick around the circle introduction where we were supposed to say the most interesting part of the drive up….ironically all of their answers had something to do with my childhood, i.e. being a home schooler in a band with an eye patch, and choosing to play the saxophone because it was the closest I could come to in elementary school to saying the word “sex” without getting in trouble and then switching to the French horn because I was told French horn players were good kissers and figured I could use all the help I could get. (Luckily the boys didn’t tell everyone the instruments and the reasons I played them)
I think one of the best parts about being able to relax and be yourself, was I got to know more people, and actually cared about getting to know them. I had a great time just talking to other girls and not worrying about where someone else in the room was and how I looked to them at the angle I was standing in (yes, it is an effort sometimes). I also learned how to cross country ski. I’ve never been skiing of any type before but I have acquired some skiing knowledge though the years. I heard that if you go skiing and want to slow down you point your skis towards each other to form a pizza shape and that will slow you down. Apparently with cross country skiing it actually is a bad idea, because it crosses your skis too much and you end up in a wind-milling heap no more than 40 feet into the trip. That was my first lesson.
I was also told that if you want to suddenly stop then you just jab your ski poles into the snow and use your arm muscles to stop you. Our group ended up going up a back country road hill that was covered in snow. When we got to the top we realized we couldn’t go any farther and had to turn around to go down. Brian, the first person to go down, had a bad knee and ended up in a heap on the side of the hill; Josh, the second person down went to assist him and somehow also ended up on the ground. Being next to go down I slowly started my decent. I started to pick up a little speed and decided I would jam my ski poles into the snow and stop myself. Unfortunately while going down hill if you jam your ski poles into the snow to stop it actually has the effect of giving you a quick boost and you go flying down the hill!! So there I was, flying down the hill, past Brian and Josh, slightly screaming on the way down (I’m sure it wasn’t too loud?). The end of the hill connected with another road and if you don’t stop there are trees and a sharp drop off. To avoid hurling into trees and a drop off….I chose to hit a snow pile that flung me on my back and knocked my hat off. Hearing the cheers from the top of the hill of people that were obviously impressed with my skiing skills was enough to get me back on my feet again. Every person after me came speeding down the hill and crashed into the snow pile (other than Jason who ended up in the tree limbs and bending a ski pole). So there you have it…if you ever attempt cross country skiing do not jam your poles into the ground to stop yourself on a hill, and do not pizza stop while on flat surfaces. Basically once you start you just have to keep going until you tip over....which will happen.
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