It's a bird! It's a plane! It's.....

A asked me to go on the latest JROTC (Jr. ROTC) ski trip with him this past weekend. We went to church Saturday eve. and left early Sunday morning, leaving hubby home with the other kids. We ignorantly anticipated weather mirroring the last trip, and ended up sorely ill prepared. The younger boys had misplaced one of A's good ski gloves, so we grabbed another pair as we ran out the door and thought we'd be fine. The weather started getting uglier as the bus made its way up the mountain, but my latent Pollyanna tendency raised its head and tried to convince me that all the extra snow would make the skiing more fun. Pollyanna's an idiot. It wasn't snow being blown by gale-force winds, it was ice. Ice is hard. And cold. Did I mention that it's hard? Not as hard as cobblestones, but nothing you'd want being thrown at your face. By the time we made our way up to the lift-ticket booth I was done. My face felt raw. My new plan was to crawl to the lodge and spend the day reading and listening to hubby's iPod, but the JROTC Commander somehow managed to convince me that it wouldn't be so bad once we actually started skiing. The Arctic ice-blast was blowing from the top of the mountain down, so, in theory, if we were also going down the mountain it wouldn't be bad at all. Not all theories hold up under experimentation, and this one completely collapsed. This was no ordinary Arctic ice-blast. This one was possessed by Satan himself and managed to blow right at us regardless of our direction. It's not easy to ride a T-bar while covering your face with both hands. Although, had we included goggles and neck socks or face masks in our ski wear we might not have picked up that helpful little tidbit, so it all works out. Pollyanna once again raised her deceptive head and pointed out that there's always a bright-side. Maybe having ice gravel blasted into my face would be like a natural microdermabrasion treatment. Pollyanna lies. There was no bright -side. No youthful, dewy glow for me! No, sir. By lunch time I looked like I'd had gravel thrown at my face for hours.

After lunch Major (the Commander) decided A and I had progressed enough to go to the chair lift and make our way down a couple of blue hills. The blue runs were more protected from the flying ice so we were actually able to focus on improving our technique rather than making sure we weren't blown into the oncoming T-bar. Major and his wife are great teachers and A and I made it down the blue slopes without dying, which on first glance I wasn't so sure we'd accomplish. But we pulled it off with only one mishap while disembarking the chair, which resulted in my skis and legs wrapping around me in an unnatural and extremely painful position. Forget standing gracefully when your feet are twisted up around your head with 5-foot sticks attached to them. It wasn't pretty.

The highlight of the day, however, happened on our final descent. Major took-off after telling us he knew another way down. Being obedient little cadets we followed him and suddenly found ourselves heading off the slope onto the untouched powder of the treeline. "A" thought it was awesome and his exuberance led to a burst of pure teenage wisdom that sent him off in a different direction than Major in an attempt to "beat him to the bottom". I was pulling up the rear and desperately trying not to lose control as I straddled small fir trees and brush. Before I knew what had happened I found myself face-first in a cloud of powder with my feet around my ears again. I learned something else, though. Avoid having to put your skis back on on virgin powder. It's hard to push back into the bindings without anything of substance under the skis. When I'd stopped laughing and picked myself back up I noticed "A" way off one direction while Major was way off in the opposite direction. "A" was slowly trying to maneuver his way back through the scrub and trees and was having a hard time of it, but laughing at his own stupidity in thinking he could randomly take-off and guess at which direction Major was heading and beat him. He passed me to try to catch up with Major, (testosterone at work, once again!) and as I came around a bend I heard him shout as I watched him fly off an embankment, land for a split second, then splat face-first and skid to a stop. His skis popped off and landed next to him, missing his head, thank goodness, which is obviously not always working at full-capacity anyway. I laughed so hard I cried. It was one of the funniest things I've ever seen in my life! I stood there holding my sides and wiping my eyes as "A" laughed and shouted about how "totally cool" it had been. It was the perfect ending to our trip!

My tired, old body needs to be better conditioned for this type of activity. The muscle spasms in my back aren't as bad today, but I'm definitely still stiff. "A" and I may be going on the JROTC overnight hiking/ski trip next month and I certainly can't be moaning and groaning around a bunch of teenagers. How "uncool" would that be! Because of the bad gloves he had to wear "A" ended up with cold weather injuries to his hands; mostly his fingertips. We got him warmed up just shy of frostbite, so he had the subcutaneous blisters without the skin discoloration. Only his fingernails hurt today and his grip is still weaker than it should be, but he's on the mend. Unfortunately, he'll probably always suffer from hand/finger pain in cold weather now; but Pollyanna tells me this was an important, albeit painful, lesson for him to learn about knowing his own limits and being humble enough to risk looking like a wimp and quit when he needs to. (She'd better not be lying to me again.)