Page 26 of Everything Is Yours
Jack, Mya, Lily, Cody, Emily, Dave and Emma had all skied several times before. Jack and Lily’s parents used to take an annual trip to Les Arcs in France every year, so both of them had more experience than the rest of us put together. Only Rick, Lennon, and I were ski virgins, although I had water-skied before.
Dita had made huge pots of steaming hot coffee, cinnamon buns, butter croissants and small rolls with cheese and pate-type meat inside. Initially, I balked at the thought of eating anything, but one cinnamon bun tasted so good and it overrode the dull nauseous feeling in the pit of my stomach. So, I had three.
Each of us paired off and took the snowmobiles to park close to the foot of the chairlift. Lily wanted to drive, but I knew I’d be pretty proficient because it was similar to the Jet Ski I’d used back in Florida in my teens. The only difference was, it was snow, and I was used to water.
Jack, Dave, Cody and Lenny were like maniacs on theirs. Within minutes, the flawless snow in front of us was churned up, and large chunks of compacted ice was flying off the back of the blades. When they started racing each other and cutting across one another’s paths, it was apparent to me it wasn’t their first time on these either.
Jack and Dave were fearless. Lily told me Jack was an amazing sportsman and could do whatever he put his mind to. From the way he was handling the snowmobile I didn’t doubt that for a minute. Rick had Emma on the back of his, and Emily and Mya were sharing one. When I looked back turning the bend, they were about half a mile behind the rest of us.
An icy wind bit through the mask covering my face, and I quickly realized why the snowmobiles had heated handlebars. The temperature gauge at the cabin entrance read -16 Celsius and it was metric measurement. Cody had an app on his phone to convert the temp, and it was only 3.2 Fahrenheit.
Entering the ski rental center, we quickly realized that our ski goggles, hats and masks offered us true anonymity for the first time in years. That gave me the most ridiculous buzz.
We were all asked our height and weight and the staff provided skis suitable for us while the bindings were fit to our boot size and weight. Just hooking them together to carry them was an art. We placed them over our shoulders and struggled to walk in the plastic hard cased boots to the base of the blue run chair lift where we were told our instructor was waiting.
I expected a huge burly army-type instructor, so I was taken aback when a small, slightly built teenager greeted us and introduced herself as our teacher for the day. Twisting the top half of her body she glanced up the mountain and smiled. When she looked back, she explained that the run we were about to take was the easiest one on the mountain. She told us not to worry, and I immediately began to worry. My mother conditioned me that way. She’d told me that daily until suddenly she was dying. I craned my neck above Lily’s head and looked up at the run. It still looked a hell of a long way up there to me.
Rick slapped me on the back and grinned. “Nervous, Alfie? How hard can it be? It isn’t like we have to do anything except stand on these sticks, and they’ll bring us back down, right?”
I figured Rick was full of shit. He was either ignorant, arrogant or crapping himself; just like I was. I guessed it was the third. I’d have liked to say I hadn’t felt nervous at all. And if I had I’d have been bullshitting. In my mind, I tried not to overthink it and figured I’d be fine once someone told me how to stop if I was going too fast.
I knew enough about physics to know that the incline wasn’t conducive to someone who was one hundred and seventy-eight pounds standing on a steep gradient. I was expected to stand on two narrow pieces of flat, smooth wood or fiberglass, or whatever the fuck they are made of. That sounded like a pretty hazardous way to have fun to me. So attaching a pair of skis to my feet and adding a slippery surface like snow made my argument for having the right to worry seemed justified.
I’d have bet my rock star reputation I wasn’t going to be traveling downhill at a snail’s pace once those blades made contact with the snow. The momentum from the downward force equaled speed, and I wished I hadn’t been so good at science in school because I preferred the ignorant option for that particular task. Too much knowledge can be dangerous at times. I swallowed hard while I digested how much I was willing to risk for the woman I loved. Nerves began to take hold of me.
Just placing the skis on the ground and snapping into them took a certain amount of skill. Lenny and Rick found that out when they tried to snap their boots into the bindings to secure them in place. They both fell ass over tit without having to try, and Rick cussed loudly, blaming Lenny for holding on to him and taking him down.
Cody and Jack laughed hysterically over their domino act, and Jack pulled Mya into his side. “You’re a good skier, right love?”
“Yeah I know what I’m doing. Maybe we’d better take Uncle Rick between us.”
Mya grinned back affectionately but glanced down at her uncle who was struggling back to his feet with the help of Lily and Emily.
Jack chewed his lip for a second biting back a grin then said, “Ew, that would be incestuous, Mya.” It was obvious Jack was still hung up on Rick’s tripod remark from earlier.
Mya smacked Jack’s arm and shook her head, “Jack Cunningham, you are incorrigible, stop it. I meant to help him.”
Jack smirked knowingly at me and shrugged his shoulders.
“You’ve never done this before, Alfie? Being a rock star must give you an incredible buzz, but you know what you’re getting each time you step out on that stage, right? All those horny women and frenzied male rock fans who adore you. Wait until you feel the buzz from this, I guarantee you it’s something else. With Mother Nature on the stage, you never know what you’re getting, so you need to be ready to adjust and be resourceful to keep yourself and everyone around you safe on the slope.”
The instructor began to explain the rules of the slope, but when I looked at the skiers there didn’t appear to be any rules to my untrained eye—fast or slow. There were different abilities using the same broad piece of flattened slope, and I wondered which one of them was going to take me down if I got in their way.
Lily’s gloved hand pulled on the edge of the zipper near my neck and told me to fasten it to the top. I put my skis on the ground and snapped my boots into the bindings successfully using the poles I’d been given to balance myself.
As soon as the instructor began to move we all shuffled behind her in the direction of the lifts. Lily grabbed my hand and dragged me forward in front of a seat that was coming quite rapidly in our direction on a carousel behind me. Suddenly, I was swept off my feet, when it hit the back of my knees, and my ass landed the chair with Cody and Lily as well. A large bar came over my head and across our laps to keep us in place. Lily lifted her skis and placed them on a foot bar, and I managed to do the same. The climb to the first run only took a few minutes and then I had the arduous task of getting off between Lily and Cody without getting killed as the lift continued past when we stood.
Lily pulled me with her, hanging on my arm and I felt out of my depth. I was born in the sun. The ocean was my friend not that white fluffy stuff that looked all pretty and pleasant but could give me a brain injury if I landed the wrong way. At least if I fell in the ocean, I’d have more chance of dying than living my life in a vegetative state.
I knew I was being pretty dramatic thinking that way, but I wasn’t feeling very rational. I had a hangover, Rick Fars had kissed me the night before, and I was still mulling over Jack and Cody’s discussion about Lily. So I wasn’t that sure my head was in the right place to concentrate on the new skill of flying down the mountain with a pair of six foot by three-inch suicidal sticks stuck to my feet.
One of the first things Gretta, the instructor, taught us was how to snowplow. That was a basic way of slowing our speed, and I felt much more confident about the run once I’d mastered that. She looked effortless when she did it. Apart from those who had skied before, we all looked like donkeys taking our first steps when we tried it. Eventually, she felt we were competent enough to start the descent so she had us follow her on the track behind her. Jack and Dave were directly behind her, Rick, Emily and Emma, behind them, with Cody, Lennon, Mya, then me and Lily at the back.
We started out okay, and the speed was much less than I had expected but about half way down the instructor picked up the pace, and I was concentrating hard to stay upright as we weaved our way from left to right on the ski run. I wasn’t sure what happened, but Rick obviously crashed in front of us, and the others instantly started to go down as well. It looked as if some invisible sniper was picking them all off one by one.
Somehow I managed to stay upright and skied past them. Lily was hot on my heels, appearing alongside me and giving me the ‘thumbs up’ sign and I knew I was doing okay. The rest of the run was actually quite pleasant, and it was apparent my previous water skiing experience was helpful. The same bent-leg-straight-back position applied on snow for traveling at the leisurely speed we were compared to most of the skiers that whizzed past us.
Lily, Jack, Dave and I waited at the bottom again for the others to arrive, and Mya was first down, giggling with laughter. She explained that Rick was cursing like a sailor at the instructor, accusing the ski-school of providing faulty equipment because he failed to believe his balance let him down. Another ten minutes passed and the rest of them arrived. Len complained he’d pulled his groin, but Cody blamed the lack of girl-on-boy action for Len’s groin strain.
