I heard someone say the other day that most people find it preferable to spend Sunday morning with Starbucks and the New York Times than to go to church. When I heard this, my heart jumped. Of course! That's what I am missing. The Times and a Venti Americano.
I grew up going to church on Sunday morning, Sunday night, and sometimes Wednesday evening as well. I loved it. It was an hour and a half away from the stress and fear of life, and I liked hearing that God loves me and everyone else. Then I became a teenager, and church lost much of its appeal. After some years away, I started to venture back, and recently I have been going to a church that meets on Sunday night.
So now, I could go to Starbucks on Sunday morning and read the paper if I decided to do that. And go to church on Sunday night as well! But the real thing I wondered when hearing the speaker was, what would I enjoy more?
I think it depends on my frame of mind. If I am feeling connected, whole, and healthy, I think either would be fine. But if I am feeling discouraged, ashamed, or disconnected, there is no way I could survive Starbucks. I would start feeling paranoid, and that I was wasting my life (rather than practicing self care.) That is the situation where going to church really calls to me.
I need to feel that I am part of something bigger than myself. Worshiping with other believers, hearing a solid message about God, and taking communion really helps me to stop thinking so much about me and lifts my head up to where I can see other people and think about them. It makes me want to be healthy and whole, makes me want to help others. It's really hard to get that from coffee and the newspaper. Which is not to say I will quit going to Starbucks any time soon.
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
Time Management
Wrote this in 2009. Posted it in 2014. By the Grace of God, and after losing my job in 2009, I have been granted willingness to not only show up for work a few minutes early, but to give up snacks, flour and sugar, and since December 2012, poyrn and maxtrubation. (Still struggling with wanting to make money, and wanting to play games.) Anyway, here is the 2009 me:
Tardiness is my lifelong companion. I am often late for work, late for appointments, and late for commitments to my family and friends. I hope this public confession will reach the attention of the Lord Jesus Christ. I know he is the only one who can relieve me of this problem. I am in therapy for a variety of issues with a Christian counselor who has a broad theology of personal fulfillment with which he is looking to reform my thinking. He has suggested that I show up at work at 7:15 a.m. from now on because I "owe them that much" after years of tardiness. I resent the idea that I owe anyone anything, and this is part of the reason I am up to my ears in debt and have a nagging feeling that I am entitled to rewards (food, games, stock watching sites, and until recently, internet p0rney0griafey) every few minutes, days, or weeks.
I am beginning to understand that this persistent personal problem of tardiness is related to low self worth, or to an inaccurate concept of the self as worthy of the positive experience associated with punctuality. A predictable pattern of behavior precedes and accompanies the tardiness; mainly inability to prioritize tasks and set limits on time. For example, I will chase a technical issue down a rabbit hole for an hour while the time passes which I had allotted for project planning or for leaving the office to travel to a local meeting off-site.
I heard a great quote many years ago, which said "I'm not much, but I'm all I think about." That's how I feel a lot. I think I am a mentally ill person who is so self-obsessed he can't make any sort of progress; the type of circular, autistic thinker Dustin Hoffman portrayed in "Rain Man" (although I have more compassion for that character than for myself, as someone who "should know better." )
My Christian faith has been a blessing to me; when I am able to separate from my selfish obsessions, faith opens my eyes to the world around me with a grand perspective. I can see God at work in the wind in the trees, in the rain and snow, in the eyes of my wife and children. This is where I often choose to live, in God's world, away from the darkness of my inner thoughts.
The therapy I am undergoing seems to be pointing me toward an integrated mind; one that allows the fresh reality of faith to override the default settings of insanity and self-destruction that are present in the rest of life. Paul called this the struggle between the Spirit and the flesh. The Spirit desires all that is right and true, gentle and pure, and the flesh, of course, is the sinful nature that develops as we grow up in a f*cked-up world. This struggle is so exhausting and time consuming to the individual that many opt out of it, and simply turn to the worship of things and money for the short-term pleasure they provide. That pleasure is called "happiness."
The Kingdom of God allows for a deeper pleasure, known in the Bible as "joy." This one comes when we submit to the will of God (often, to the benefit of our own emotional maturity or sanctification) and make choices that go against the flesh, against the sinful nature. Examples of this in my life include giving up alcohol and drugs in 1990, cigarettes in 1995, moving my family to Portland to join a church plant in a rough neighborhood but with a vibrant internal community in June of 2006, and in July 2006, confessing to my wife 13 years of unfaithfulness and lying about the images I was looking at online. The strength to make that confession came through the Spirit of Christ that I received when I gave my life to him, and the direction came through confidence I had by being involved in a weekly men's Bible study through that church.
I am in 12-step programs around drug and alcohol addiction, debt, and sexual impurity. These programs all seek to relieve the individual of emotional and mental unrest (insanity) around the particular behavior, and to provide relief through a shared group experience of abstinence and recovery from compulsive thinking and decisions. They further allow for emotional development to overcome the compulsions long-term by providing specific steps to take, usually called a "program." In many cases this means working these steps with a "sponsor," someone who takes the newcomer through the program and shows them the ropes. But this approach is often very specific to the particular type of addiction the program addresses. In fairness, many benefits arise from intensive practice of these programs. They often lead people with no previous faith or (as in my case) misdirected faith back into a conscious relationship with God. But it is in the church setting that I have found the true purpose and direction for my life and my faith; that is, the worship and service of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Tardiness is my lifelong companion. I am often late for work, late for appointments, and late for commitments to my family and friends. I hope this public confession will reach the attention of the Lord Jesus Christ. I know he is the only one who can relieve me of this problem. I am in therapy for a variety of issues with a Christian counselor who has a broad theology of personal fulfillment with which he is looking to reform my thinking. He has suggested that I show up at work at 7:15 a.m. from now on because I "owe them that much" after years of tardiness. I resent the idea that I owe anyone anything, and this is part of the reason I am up to my ears in debt and have a nagging feeling that I am entitled to rewards (food, games, stock watching sites, and until recently, internet p0rney0griafey) every few minutes, days, or weeks.
I am beginning to understand that this persistent personal problem of tardiness is related to low self worth, or to an inaccurate concept of the self as worthy of the positive experience associated with punctuality. A predictable pattern of behavior precedes and accompanies the tardiness; mainly inability to prioritize tasks and set limits on time. For example, I will chase a technical issue down a rabbit hole for an hour while the time passes which I had allotted for project planning or for leaving the office to travel to a local meeting off-site.
I heard a great quote many years ago, which said "I'm not much, but I'm all I think about." That's how I feel a lot. I think I am a mentally ill person who is so self-obsessed he can't make any sort of progress; the type of circular, autistic thinker Dustin Hoffman portrayed in "Rain Man" (although I have more compassion for that character than for myself, as someone who "should know better." )
My Christian faith has been a blessing to me; when I am able to separate from my selfish obsessions, faith opens my eyes to the world around me with a grand perspective. I can see God at work in the wind in the trees, in the rain and snow, in the eyes of my wife and children. This is where I often choose to live, in God's world, away from the darkness of my inner thoughts.
The therapy I am undergoing seems to be pointing me toward an integrated mind; one that allows the fresh reality of faith to override the default settings of insanity and self-destruction that are present in the rest of life. Paul called this the struggle between the Spirit and the flesh. The Spirit desires all that is right and true, gentle and pure, and the flesh, of course, is the sinful nature that develops as we grow up in a f*cked-up world. This struggle is so exhausting and time consuming to the individual that many opt out of it, and simply turn to the worship of things and money for the short-term pleasure they provide. That pleasure is called "happiness."
The Kingdom of God allows for a deeper pleasure, known in the Bible as "joy." This one comes when we submit to the will of God (often, to the benefit of our own emotional maturity or sanctification) and make choices that go against the flesh, against the sinful nature. Examples of this in my life include giving up alcohol and drugs in 1990, cigarettes in 1995, moving my family to Portland to join a church plant in a rough neighborhood but with a vibrant internal community in June of 2006, and in July 2006, confessing to my wife 13 years of unfaithfulness and lying about the images I was looking at online. The strength to make that confession came through the Spirit of Christ that I received when I gave my life to him, and the direction came through confidence I had by being involved in a weekly men's Bible study through that church.
I am in 12-step programs around drug and alcohol addiction, debt, and sexual impurity. These programs all seek to relieve the individual of emotional and mental unrest (insanity) around the particular behavior, and to provide relief through a shared group experience of abstinence and recovery from compulsive thinking and decisions. They further allow for emotional development to overcome the compulsions long-term by providing specific steps to take, usually called a "program." In many cases this means working these steps with a "sponsor," someone who takes the newcomer through the program and shows them the ropes. But this approach is often very specific to the particular type of addiction the program addresses. In fairness, many benefits arise from intensive practice of these programs. They often lead people with no previous faith or (as in my case) misdirected faith back into a conscious relationship with God. But it is in the church setting that I have found the true purpose and direction for my life and my faith; that is, the worship and service of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Monday, May 5, 2014
Cinco de Mayo 2014
Hi.
I am getting ready to shut down the PC and go home to barbecue steak and salmon (possibly in the rain.) Since I checked in, I have seen some wholesale miracles in the life of my family, and some heartbreaking trials.
Good news first. Lisa and I are going to church together every week. This is what I always wanted, and the answer to my prayers. We have joined a small group and we're getting along well with the brothers and sisters there. One hiccup so far in the small group: At our family Communion meeting, there was some postulating about how we are all sinners. With her awareness of the kids in the room, my wife had a strong reaction to the talk track.
I am working on having empathy for my wife's feelings, since by nature I am selfish, sarcastic, insensitive, and a boundary-buster. In Christ, I have the power to be gentle, loving, sensitive, caring, and respectful. Help me Jesus.
My son's grandma (former girlfriend's mother) passed away last week. I got the call from the mother, who told me my son is feeling like I put too much pressure on him to become a Christian, and now is practicing as an atheist. This is too much for me, Jesus. I need you to take over.
Time to go.
What do you call a sober member of AA, who hasn't had a drink in 24 years, is growing emotionally, and is staying employed and married one day at a time? Alcoholic.
I am getting ready to shut down the PC and go home to barbecue steak and salmon (possibly in the rain.) Since I checked in, I have seen some wholesale miracles in the life of my family, and some heartbreaking trials.
Good news first. Lisa and I are going to church together every week. This is what I always wanted, and the answer to my prayers. We have joined a small group and we're getting along well with the brothers and sisters there. One hiccup so far in the small group: At our family Communion meeting, there was some postulating about how we are all sinners. With her awareness of the kids in the room, my wife had a strong reaction to the talk track.
I am working on having empathy for my wife's feelings, since by nature I am selfish, sarcastic, insensitive, and a boundary-buster. In Christ, I have the power to be gentle, loving, sensitive, caring, and respectful. Help me Jesus.
My son's grandma (former girlfriend's mother) passed away last week. I got the call from the mother, who told me my son is feeling like I put too much pressure on him to become a Christian, and now is practicing as an atheist. This is too much for me, Jesus. I need you to take over.
Time to go.
What do you call a sober member of AA, who hasn't had a drink in 24 years, is growing emotionally, and is staying employed and married one day at a time? Alcoholic.
Thursday, December 5, 2013
If -- By Rudyard Kipling
If—
By Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about; don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim:
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can trust your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!
By Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about; don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim:
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can trust your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!
Life as a Husband, Dad, Systems Analyst, and Responsible Adult.
It's December of 2013, and I feel content. Our company is selling software, and that means we are doing something right. I will have a busy couple of months coming up, traveling and implementing large-scale software projects.
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| my window on the world for 9 hours a day |
I am getting along well with my wife and daughters. I feel a little distant from my son, but he knows I love him and am proud of him.
Finances are tight right now. We bought a house in the summer and our expenses rose by about $600 per month. We have a little yard for the dog, and Christmas lights around the front porch. My wife has started going back to church, and I go with her sometimes. God has really blessed our family, mostly with spiritual blessings in Christ, and also with material blessings. I have a car that runs, by the grace of God, with 175,000 miles and some needed service. My wife has a good car too, and recently got the oil changed. We are truly blessed to have jobs, cars, a house, enough to eat, and clothes to wear.
A lot of my free time is spent in addiction recovery-related activities. We are doing a financial program to work toward getting out of debt and living more prosperously. By the grace of God, I have been sober from drugs and alcohol for 23 years. I am free from porn and sexual acting out for 11 months. Also, maintaining a 60-lb weight loss since Halloween of 2011. This is achieved by not eating flour and sugar, weighing and measuring my meals, and meetings, Bible study, prayer, and meditation.
I have started doing an exercise plan called Power of 10. It involves any kind of resistance training, 10 seconds in and 10 seconds out. So a pushup is a full 10 seconds up, and a full 10 seconds down. I can do about 4.5 of these pushups until muscle failure. I do this about once a week, with a few other exercises. It helps me feel better about myself. I also take vitamins in the morning, and stretch to overcome stiffness from my multiple car wrecks since moving to Oregon.
I miss my friends, but I feel like we are getting ready to connect with more people, and I am excited about that.
That's all I have for now. It feels good to write, so I may be back sooner than later.
Here's one: What did the little dog say to the people walking by? Bow wow wow wow wow!
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Why Christians are not perfect
This was deleted off of Helium.com (some Christian probably thought it was inappropriate), but I put it here so you can read it if you want to. This essay was written 9/1/2007 - John K
I am afraid of being asked to leave my church. I lie, sometimes I slander other people, and I'm selfish and fearful. All qualities that can lead to mistrust and misunderstanding in relationships. Whenever the pastor reads a scripture about the wolves among the sheep, the false prophets, or the idolaters or adulterers, I think he might be talking about me. The other day, our pastor talked to me about something I had said about him, and I admitted what I said and apologized, but I felt like that was a "strike" against me. The pastor forgave me, and I believe him, but the feeling sticks.
What Paul tells me is that (Romans 5:20) "The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, (21) so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."
So without knowledge of my sin, I'm just another ignorant sinner. But when I become conscious of my shortcomings through my own guilty conscience, I give God an opportunity to save me and make me more righteous than I could ever muster on my own. This makes me humble, and so I go and apologize to the person I lied to, the one I slandered, the one I ignored or cheated out of time or affections.
But the answer is that Christians are just like everyone else. The difference is not in us, it is in Christ. He transforms us by something special that happens, something spiritual about believing in his death and resurrection. It's the kingdom of heaven, expressed in our own bodies, our own minds, and the way we become transparent with one another as we walk together with other believers in true community.
I am not perfect, by any means, but I have been made righteous by grace. Jesus has redeemed my drug and alcohol abuse, my sexual sin, and my financial failure. He is transforming me by the renewing of my mind through therapy and Bible study. And he is using me, both in those transparent moments with other Christians, and in the workaday world where everyone (including me) is watching and waiting for me to fuck up. So they can prove that Christians are not perfect.
I'm the first to admit it.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Skiing (Essay)
John Kimball
copyright 2013
Theory and Analysis of Lifetime Sports
Lifetime Development and Maintenance of Advanced Alpine Skiing Skills
A lifelong love of alpine skiing has developed in me an obsession with form and grace, extending into all areas of my life. From the first time I saw photos of Stein Eriksen’s easy turns, and read the words “reverse shoulder” and “stem Christy,” my mind has been captivated by the desire to put into action all the knowledge I gain from books and magazines on the subject. This essay will demonstrate the development and maintenance of lifetime skiing skills, and will relate this exercise to the reality of negotiating the often-terrorizing terrain of life on and off the slopes. For documentation I have included photographs of myself in various skiing situations, and at different times in my life.
Novice
“Try not to cross your tips.” The tow-rope tore through my little gloved fists and jerked me into motion. A wobbly start, then stubby skis settling tentatively into the track, and then a scary and speedy ride to the top of the short hill, and… wumpf. Down I went. The instructor helped me up, and pointed my tips back down the hill. That rope-tow scared the daylights out of me. It seemed to tear by at a hundred miles an hour. But after a few runs, my legs grew accustomed to the gentle slope and I was able to sidle up to the rope and grab it with one hand. I noticed the snowflakes floating gently through the afternoon sky, and tipped my head back to capture some cold bits on my tongue. It was fourth-grade heaven.
The common elements of ski instruction have evolved somewhat, though the concepts remain secure. Little kids are coaxed out onto the snow, and soon take to the slopes like fish to water. Tow ropes and, more recently, a carpeted conveyer belt for the tiny tykes, have become standard fare for the “ski-wee” set. Heading the other direction (downhill), the basic technique of “snowplow,” or applying pressure to the inside edges of both skis in a wedge fashion, is still the method of choice for controlling speed at this skill level. Soon these youngsters graduate to the “bunny hill,” where they first learn to ride a T-bar or chairlift. It is at this time in the beginning skier’s instruction that the elements of balance, self-esteem, confidence, humility and pride collide to form that elusive mix known as a “beginning skill set.” This magical bag of tricks includes the ability to avoid distractions, to maintain forward motion without falling down, to keep one’s wits about oneself, and above all, to stop.
Youngsters who develop the beginning skill set are likely to derive from the exercise a sense of accomplishment akin to the highest achievement known. This activity lands squarely in the middle of the academic year; consequently, non-skiing friends at school will turn green with envy when they learn that Marcia or Joey can ski. Furthermore, she or he is now a part of that group that talks with such wisdom of jumps, night skiing, and cute boys or girls in the lift line.
Adults who begin alpine skiing lessons for the first time may find a great deal of fear associated with the activity. To challenge a mountain is an awesome thing. Sudden whiteouts, frostbite, and hypothermia may crowd into the mind to distract the adult beginner’s attention. Rampant ego may dictate that the first run ever must be up the chairlift and down an intermediate slope.
When I was a beginner, my father took me out on the intermediate hill. He had bought for me a pair of skis with the old-style “bear-trap bindings.” These beastly contraptions fastened the boots securely to the skis. I was on my first run ever down the South Canyon side of the Daisy chair at Mount Hood Meadows in Oregon. It was dark, and snowing lightly. I felt cold. I had fallen a number of times, and my clothes were wet. I just wanted to get down the hill and have a cup of hot cocoa. I was frightened by the long expanses of open hillside, and by the fast skiers tearing by at breakneck speed and shouting to one another in the artificially lit night.
I lost sight of my dad, and I was going too fast. Suddenly a dark projectile shot out of the woods. I couldn’t stop, and the cannonball of death knocked me down, hard. I hit my head on the snow, and when I recovered I turned my vengeful eye at my attacker. “Sorry,” said the out-of-control adult beginner as he righted himself and took off into the unknown.
Much shaken, I briefly acknowledged the concerned shout of my father from farther up the hill. In misery, I righted myself and tentatively started down the hill again. At the cat-track, another skier sped toward me. I was shocked. Once again, I fuzzily reckoned I was going much too fast. I crossed my tips and fell, face-first in the snow. A sickening crack met my ears. I turned in horror to see my left foot, backwards from the rest of the leg, still firmly planted in the boot and attached to the dreaded ski. I began to sob, great gasps of anguish spilling out into the cold, clear night. Broken leg.
What had become a truly traumatic event began to shape up shortly thereafter. I had my first experience with the ski patrol, whose gentle and powerful agents deftly removed the skis and boots, placed me in a rescue sled, and splinted the fractured tibia right there on the mountain. When I arrived at the hospital in Hood River an hour later, there was nothing for the doctor to do but cast the leg. The ski patrol had set the fracture as expertly as any physician. Adding to the bright blessings of the post-traumatic experience, I was now a war hero. The following week in school, I accepted all offers of signatures and goofy drawings on the hip-height cast with the easy grace of a diplomat.
The fourth-grade experience with a broken leg translates into a fierce resolve in the rest of life. The ability to walk through fears is the most dramatic result. When a youngster recovers from the trauma of a terrifying accident, painful break and lengthy recovery, then few challenges in life can overshadow that drama. The child learns that fear and pain fall flat before the force of will.
Another great lesson from this type of experience is dependence. A healthy respect for the power of paramedics and doctors to invoke the healing process can lead the child to seek a caring and dependent relationship with God. I was awed by the ability of the Ski Patrol to “set” the fracture perfectly on the mountain, and I concluded that my desperate prayers in the snow had been answered with a resounding “Yes.”
Intermediate
Green circle. Blue square. Black diamond. Double black. To the uninformed, this might sound like an obscure card game. But to the developing skier, these symbols represent the ladder of success. As urgently as a neophyte Shotokan Karate student seeks his succession of colored belts, the student skier longs to pepper her experience with more and more difficult terrain.
As a junior high student, my favorite event was Wednesday night skiing at Cooper Spur Ski Resort, also on Mount Hood. Now a mildly major resort with even greater plans, Cooper Spur was at that time a small family ski area. A single T-bar lift led to a catwalk, from which a variety of slopes descended to the small day lodge. Local kids swooped in and out of the moguls on the steep and challenging Face, caught air off the log jump at the top of the steep “Showtime” or sought powder in the lonely, spotlighted runs at the end of the catwalk. Lift tickets sold for a buck, and all my friends were there.
The intermediate skier feels secure and confident on groomed trails. He has developed such skills as the stem Christy, or step turn. This all-purpose turn is the foundation of all race turns, and allows the skier to experience the obvious “weighting and unweighting” of each ski in a rhythmic fashion. To begin the turn, the skier points his skis down the fall line, that is, toward the bottom of the hill. To turn, he lifts one ski off the snow and steps out to that side. By placing all his weight on the inside edge of that ski, he begins to turn in the opposite direction. The other ski is brought into parallel, and the turn is completed with the help of both skis. To practice this turn, student racers will lift the inside ski completely off the snow and hold it there until it’s time to turn the other direction. The skier’s weight is then entirely on the outside, or “carving” ski.
The natural outgrowth of the development of beginning racing skills is the exercise of “running gates.” The slalom course begins to call, and the mischievous mind of the mid-level ski student can’t resist the discipline of forcing turns in precise places. This is particularly true after an invitational ski race, when rogue intermediates sneak onto the course to “wick some gates” and fancy themselves champions before the bamboo or fiberglass poles are taken down.
At this intermediate stage, the skier also becomes fascinated with “air time.” As a junior-high, fall-line-obsessed maniac, I loved to swoop into a little-known creekbed among the trees, near the bottom of the Palmer lift at Timberline Lodge. The creek formed a natural chute, in the days before man-made snowboard parks marred the alpine landscape forever. My friends and I loved to drop in and blast skyward on the opposite lip, only to flip 180 (more like 130) and successfully drop back in. Straight-ahead jumps over snow-covered boulders or tree stumps were intermediate gold. The desire to land a grand spread-eagle, “daffy” (aka scissor-kick), or “backscratcher” while airborne can produce some of the most spectacular wipeouts on the planet.
The life lessons gleaned from the intermediate skiing experience seem to parallel the emotional development of most people: Skiers who rarely hit the slopes will probably never develop beyond the intermediate stage. The concept of practice and perseverance will not apply to their skiing. Likewise, in life they may never progress beyond the reacting and scheming that comes naturally to those in the human condition. Chronic malcontents, they will continually be comparing themselves to the real performers in whatever profession they weakly embrace.
Advanced Intermediate
Ask any high-school skier worth his or her salt what their skill level is. The response will typically be (with a humble shrug), “intermediate to advanced.” This magical answer contains the seeds of a lifetime of skiing. The wizardry of the advanced intermediate, particularly if this stage is reached at a young age, smacks of a future on the slopes and on the winner’s block. Dreams of Olympic gold, World Cup victory, and heli-skiing in Warren Miller movies come to roost in the thoughts of the young athlete. She now takes great pleasure in planning a route through a treacherous mogul field, and executing most of it. Her times are shorter on the more-frequent Nastar races. Perhaps the high-school ski team gets this student as a new member.
But the finest test of the AI skill level is powder. Steep and deep, this fresh snow and cold-air experience takes on an irresistible charm to the eager skier. As a racer, I had learned over and over to lean forward in my boots, to feel the edges with my toes, and carve those turns. When I found powder, though, all that changed. This feathery substance required the development of a new level of skiing prowess. I learned to center my weight directly over level, flat, parallel skis, back ramrod straight and knees jumping up to 90 angles. The new skill even involved leaning back for control when necessary. The worst thing one can do in deep powder is to sink a tip, so the first few runs in the deep are lessons in “why we use a ‘leash’ when skiing in deep powder.” The loss of a ski that has skittered away under the undisturbed sea of white is a time-consuming event that threatens to dampen even the most jubilant spirits.
Floating through the forest, navigating between the trees on a hill that seemed much too steep to support such control, my tips crested the surface of the weightless down. I gasped with delight, the cold night air filling my chest with an overwhelming, beautiful shock. It was real! I had never had such an experience in powder. The ankle-deep snows of Mount Hood had somehow, miraculously, multiplied a hundred-fold in 24 hours of sub-zero manna from heaven. Waist-deep and ethereal, the powder exploded around me with every careful and exhausting jump-turn. At once I understood the name of Tahoe’s Heavenly Valley.
Advanced
Longer skis. Better boots. Steeper hills. Faster times. Now our skier has graduated to the upper echelons of the skiing world. Most skiers never attain the skills, knowledge, and gear that the advanced skier boasts. Most likely, he or she is a racer who has been actively running gates for four consecutive years or longer. There is still fear, but confidence and adrenaline will cause the advanced skier to enter terrain and drop off cliffs and cornices that the intermediate-level skier can only admire.
My own experience at this level was relatively short-lived. And although my skills may yet be described as “advanced,” I fear I will never again ski with the abandon this title suggests. I now have a family with young children, a concerned wife, and a half-million dollar life insurance policy, lest I forget my place. I am in my 30’s and beginning to feel the effects of jumping off roofs and cliffs. A sprained ankle from playing basketball; a strained shoulder from tossing my daughter in the air; and the double-black diamond high drop on Elevator Shaft starts to look like a sure trip to the hospital.
Ah, well. I shall retire to the blue squares and adrenaline-producing speeds of the Intermediate runs, and the single black diamonds of the occasional steep and fast showboat run. And I shall work on my reverse shoulder turns, knowing that fitness and grace are hand in hand. I will also continue to seek and destroy bumps, cornices, and steep powder-filled bowls, for as long as breath is in me.
Expert
Warren Miller's movies are filled with expert skiers. These are the rare birds that fly with easy grace from a helicopter, skis together, backs straight and knees bent, out into the open air and drop with arms outstretched into a waist-deep field of powder at the top of a forbidding mountain. They are shown outrunning avalanches, shooting off 60-foot cliffs, and landing every acrobatic jump with aplomb. Most of us grow old (read: 40-plus) before ever graduating to this elite level, but those who reach Expert have reached skiing nirvana. No hill is too steep, or rocky, or peppered with trees to deter the expert skier. They are admired from the chairlift as they amble effortlessly through a lethal mogul field or drop into a steep bowl from the high ridge, the one you have to hike to. Broken skis and broken limbs are of no consequence to the Expert.
In the Winter Olympics and the World Cup of racing, the greats of skiing are displayed for all the world to see. Jonny Mosely, the mogul king, has shown us that it is possible to negotiate a nightmarish field of apparently random bumps with easy grace and hard piston-like legs. The aerial artists who perform “jelly rolls” and inverted helicopters with a full twist are the daredevil elite of the skiing world. But on the slopes of every ski resort are another class of expert: The Ski Patrol.
Nothing is more beautiful to an above-average skier as a ski patrol officer in his or her yellow or red Gore-Tex™ jacket, making perfect turns while scouring the slopes for out-of-bounds intermediates. These heroes of the hills are often trained paramedics, with catlike reflexes and razor-sharp intuition. Providing comfort and safety to the masses, they flit about on the latest demo equipment while joking gently with the lift operators.
A harrowing experience raised its head while I was riding the Blue chairlift at night at Mount Hood Meadows in the early 1980’s. The weather had degenerated into a Northwestern phenomenon known as “freezing rain.” The wind had picked up, and the chairlift was beginning to sway erratically. Fear gripped my partner and me as I began to pray we would make it to the top of the lift safely. I promised myself this would be the last run. As we swung out over the second-highest area of the chairlift (about 60 feet off the ground; the highest span is about 100 feet up), the cables ground to a screeching halt on the lift towers. "Pop. Pop. Pop. Skreeeeeeek."
If one has never heard the sound of a lift cable stretching as it forcibly stops, one cannot know the peculiar panic of that moment. In sheer desperation, I prepared to kick off my skis and jump free, lest the cable snap above my head. From that height, I expected the skis to become razor-sharp rapiers if the lift chair were to fall straight to earth. In an alternate scenario, the cable could snap farther up the hill, or even on the return side, and we might be gently lowered to the ground.
I clung to the poles suspending our small perch as the chair swung to and fro in the icy wetness. There was a last shudder of activity from the lift tower, and then silence. For what seemed like an eternity, we swayed in the freezing breeze, waiting for the lift to start back up. They must be fixing the engine in the lift house, I surmised. Finally it became clear that we weren’t going to move. And then I heard voices from far below. There was the ski patrol, moving up the line, lowering stranded and frozen skiers to the hillside below by way of a little seat at the end of a rope. When they came to our chair, they swung a long line over the cable in front of us with a tiny metal anchor on a short pole at the end.
"Slide it under your butt and jump off the chair." The clear call of the red-jacketed ski patrol came up through the night.
"Yeah, right," I thought. But there seemed no other way down. I called back: "Do you want me to kick off my skis?"
"No, just keep them on. They will stabilize you on the way down."
In one of the most unnatural acts of my life, I scuttled onto the tiny seat and pushed myself off the chairlift. Suddenly I was dangling 60 feet up in space, clinging to a steel broomstick and swinging in the icy wind. My heart leaped into my throat as I frantically surveyed the scene. There, far below, were the heroic members of the Mt. Hood Ski Patrol. Wedged against the hill, two of them lowered me to the ground as a third looked on and talked me down.
Once on the snow, he asked me if I could ski down. I thought I could, and said so.
Safe again in the lodge, we were given hot cocoa and checked for frostbite and hypothermia. If it weren’t for the daring expertise and training of expert skiers, in love with the mountain and primed for service, that night on Mount Hood might have been much worse.
Conclusion
When a child first grabs the rope tow, someone really ought to tell the parents about the compulsion that will be embedded in his tender young mind. It may crowd out all else, becoming an obsession that threatens to overtake all other thoughts. So deeply in my psyche is the mountain and the snow, that when I lived in the Bay Area and took the occasional trip to Tahoe to try my skills at Alpine Meadows or Squaw Valley, it only fostered in me a desire to move closer to the mountains. Since I was unsuccessful at landing a job in Roseville, I began to pine for the Cascades, and in 2001 completed the cycle. My family and I now live in Saint Helens, Oregon. From Highway 30 en route to Portland I can see three mountains, including Mount Hood. Skiing is two and a half hours away, and I’m thinking about moving to the other side of town to be at a little higher elevation. Bring it on!
Documentation
For documentation, I have attached some pictures of myself skiing and wakeboarding (an off-season variant of skiing) at various times in recent history.
copyright 2013
Theory and Analysis of Lifetime Sports
Lifetime Development and Maintenance of Advanced Alpine Skiing Skills
A lifelong love of alpine skiing has developed in me an obsession with form and grace, extending into all areas of my life. From the first time I saw photos of Stein Eriksen’s easy turns, and read the words “reverse shoulder” and “stem Christy,” my mind has been captivated by the desire to put into action all the knowledge I gain from books and magazines on the subject. This essay will demonstrate the development and maintenance of lifetime skiing skills, and will relate this exercise to the reality of negotiating the often-terrorizing terrain of life on and off the slopes. For documentation I have included photographs of myself in various skiing situations, and at different times in my life.
Novice
“Try not to cross your tips.” The tow-rope tore through my little gloved fists and jerked me into motion. A wobbly start, then stubby skis settling tentatively into the track, and then a scary and speedy ride to the top of the short hill, and… wumpf. Down I went. The instructor helped me up, and pointed my tips back down the hill. That rope-tow scared the daylights out of me. It seemed to tear by at a hundred miles an hour. But after a few runs, my legs grew accustomed to the gentle slope and I was able to sidle up to the rope and grab it with one hand. I noticed the snowflakes floating gently through the afternoon sky, and tipped my head back to capture some cold bits on my tongue. It was fourth-grade heaven.
The common elements of ski instruction have evolved somewhat, though the concepts remain secure. Little kids are coaxed out onto the snow, and soon take to the slopes like fish to water. Tow ropes and, more recently, a carpeted conveyer belt for the tiny tykes, have become standard fare for the “ski-wee” set. Heading the other direction (downhill), the basic technique of “snowplow,” or applying pressure to the inside edges of both skis in a wedge fashion, is still the method of choice for controlling speed at this skill level. Soon these youngsters graduate to the “bunny hill,” where they first learn to ride a T-bar or chairlift. It is at this time in the beginning skier’s instruction that the elements of balance, self-esteem, confidence, humility and pride collide to form that elusive mix known as a “beginning skill set.” This magical bag of tricks includes the ability to avoid distractions, to maintain forward motion without falling down, to keep one’s wits about oneself, and above all, to stop.
Youngsters who develop the beginning skill set are likely to derive from the exercise a sense of accomplishment akin to the highest achievement known. This activity lands squarely in the middle of the academic year; consequently, non-skiing friends at school will turn green with envy when they learn that Marcia or Joey can ski. Furthermore, she or he is now a part of that group that talks with such wisdom of jumps, night skiing, and cute boys or girls in the lift line.
Adults who begin alpine skiing lessons for the first time may find a great deal of fear associated with the activity. To challenge a mountain is an awesome thing. Sudden whiteouts, frostbite, and hypothermia may crowd into the mind to distract the adult beginner’s attention. Rampant ego may dictate that the first run ever must be up the chairlift and down an intermediate slope.
When I was a beginner, my father took me out on the intermediate hill. He had bought for me a pair of skis with the old-style “bear-trap bindings.” These beastly contraptions fastened the boots securely to the skis. I was on my first run ever down the South Canyon side of the Daisy chair at Mount Hood Meadows in Oregon. It was dark, and snowing lightly. I felt cold. I had fallen a number of times, and my clothes were wet. I just wanted to get down the hill and have a cup of hot cocoa. I was frightened by the long expanses of open hillside, and by the fast skiers tearing by at breakneck speed and shouting to one another in the artificially lit night.
I lost sight of my dad, and I was going too fast. Suddenly a dark projectile shot out of the woods. I couldn’t stop, and the cannonball of death knocked me down, hard. I hit my head on the snow, and when I recovered I turned my vengeful eye at my attacker. “Sorry,” said the out-of-control adult beginner as he righted himself and took off into the unknown.
Much shaken, I briefly acknowledged the concerned shout of my father from farther up the hill. In misery, I righted myself and tentatively started down the hill again. At the cat-track, another skier sped toward me. I was shocked. Once again, I fuzzily reckoned I was going much too fast. I crossed my tips and fell, face-first in the snow. A sickening crack met my ears. I turned in horror to see my left foot, backwards from the rest of the leg, still firmly planted in the boot and attached to the dreaded ski. I began to sob, great gasps of anguish spilling out into the cold, clear night. Broken leg.
What had become a truly traumatic event began to shape up shortly thereafter. I had my first experience with the ski patrol, whose gentle and powerful agents deftly removed the skis and boots, placed me in a rescue sled, and splinted the fractured tibia right there on the mountain. When I arrived at the hospital in Hood River an hour later, there was nothing for the doctor to do but cast the leg. The ski patrol had set the fracture as expertly as any physician. Adding to the bright blessings of the post-traumatic experience, I was now a war hero. The following week in school, I accepted all offers of signatures and goofy drawings on the hip-height cast with the easy grace of a diplomat.
The fourth-grade experience with a broken leg translates into a fierce resolve in the rest of life. The ability to walk through fears is the most dramatic result. When a youngster recovers from the trauma of a terrifying accident, painful break and lengthy recovery, then few challenges in life can overshadow that drama. The child learns that fear and pain fall flat before the force of will.
Another great lesson from this type of experience is dependence. A healthy respect for the power of paramedics and doctors to invoke the healing process can lead the child to seek a caring and dependent relationship with God. I was awed by the ability of the Ski Patrol to “set” the fracture perfectly on the mountain, and I concluded that my desperate prayers in the snow had been answered with a resounding “Yes.”
Intermediate
Green circle. Blue square. Black diamond. Double black. To the uninformed, this might sound like an obscure card game. But to the developing skier, these symbols represent the ladder of success. As urgently as a neophyte Shotokan Karate student seeks his succession of colored belts, the student skier longs to pepper her experience with more and more difficult terrain.
As a junior high student, my favorite event was Wednesday night skiing at Cooper Spur Ski Resort, also on Mount Hood. Now a mildly major resort with even greater plans, Cooper Spur was at that time a small family ski area. A single T-bar lift led to a catwalk, from which a variety of slopes descended to the small day lodge. Local kids swooped in and out of the moguls on the steep and challenging Face, caught air off the log jump at the top of the steep “Showtime” or sought powder in the lonely, spotlighted runs at the end of the catwalk. Lift tickets sold for a buck, and all my friends were there.
The intermediate skier feels secure and confident on groomed trails. He has developed such skills as the stem Christy, or step turn. This all-purpose turn is the foundation of all race turns, and allows the skier to experience the obvious “weighting and unweighting” of each ski in a rhythmic fashion. To begin the turn, the skier points his skis down the fall line, that is, toward the bottom of the hill. To turn, he lifts one ski off the snow and steps out to that side. By placing all his weight on the inside edge of that ski, he begins to turn in the opposite direction. The other ski is brought into parallel, and the turn is completed with the help of both skis. To practice this turn, student racers will lift the inside ski completely off the snow and hold it there until it’s time to turn the other direction. The skier’s weight is then entirely on the outside, or “carving” ski.
The natural outgrowth of the development of beginning racing skills is the exercise of “running gates.” The slalom course begins to call, and the mischievous mind of the mid-level ski student can’t resist the discipline of forcing turns in precise places. This is particularly true after an invitational ski race, when rogue intermediates sneak onto the course to “wick some gates” and fancy themselves champions before the bamboo or fiberglass poles are taken down.
At this intermediate stage, the skier also becomes fascinated with “air time.” As a junior-high, fall-line-obsessed maniac, I loved to swoop into a little-known creekbed among the trees, near the bottom of the Palmer lift at Timberline Lodge. The creek formed a natural chute, in the days before man-made snowboard parks marred the alpine landscape forever. My friends and I loved to drop in and blast skyward on the opposite lip, only to flip 180 (more like 130) and successfully drop back in. Straight-ahead jumps over snow-covered boulders or tree stumps were intermediate gold. The desire to land a grand spread-eagle, “daffy” (aka scissor-kick), or “backscratcher” while airborne can produce some of the most spectacular wipeouts on the planet.
The life lessons gleaned from the intermediate skiing experience seem to parallel the emotional development of most people: Skiers who rarely hit the slopes will probably never develop beyond the intermediate stage. The concept of practice and perseverance will not apply to their skiing. Likewise, in life they may never progress beyond the reacting and scheming that comes naturally to those in the human condition. Chronic malcontents, they will continually be comparing themselves to the real performers in whatever profession they weakly embrace.
Advanced Intermediate
Ask any high-school skier worth his or her salt what their skill level is. The response will typically be (with a humble shrug), “intermediate to advanced.” This magical answer contains the seeds of a lifetime of skiing. The wizardry of the advanced intermediate, particularly if this stage is reached at a young age, smacks of a future on the slopes and on the winner’s block. Dreams of Olympic gold, World Cup victory, and heli-skiing in Warren Miller movies come to roost in the thoughts of the young athlete. She now takes great pleasure in planning a route through a treacherous mogul field, and executing most of it. Her times are shorter on the more-frequent Nastar races. Perhaps the high-school ski team gets this student as a new member.
But the finest test of the AI skill level is powder. Steep and deep, this fresh snow and cold-air experience takes on an irresistible charm to the eager skier. As a racer, I had learned over and over to lean forward in my boots, to feel the edges with my toes, and carve those turns. When I found powder, though, all that changed. This feathery substance required the development of a new level of skiing prowess. I learned to center my weight directly over level, flat, parallel skis, back ramrod straight and knees jumping up to 90 angles. The new skill even involved leaning back for control when necessary. The worst thing one can do in deep powder is to sink a tip, so the first few runs in the deep are lessons in “why we use a ‘leash’ when skiing in deep powder.” The loss of a ski that has skittered away under the undisturbed sea of white is a time-consuming event that threatens to dampen even the most jubilant spirits.
Floating through the forest, navigating between the trees on a hill that seemed much too steep to support such control, my tips crested the surface of the weightless down. I gasped with delight, the cold night air filling my chest with an overwhelming, beautiful shock. It was real! I had never had such an experience in powder. The ankle-deep snows of Mount Hood had somehow, miraculously, multiplied a hundred-fold in 24 hours of sub-zero manna from heaven. Waist-deep and ethereal, the powder exploded around me with every careful and exhausting jump-turn. At once I understood the name of Tahoe’s Heavenly Valley.
Advanced
Longer skis. Better boots. Steeper hills. Faster times. Now our skier has graduated to the upper echelons of the skiing world. Most skiers never attain the skills, knowledge, and gear that the advanced skier boasts. Most likely, he or she is a racer who has been actively running gates for four consecutive years or longer. There is still fear, but confidence and adrenaline will cause the advanced skier to enter terrain and drop off cliffs and cornices that the intermediate-level skier can only admire.
My own experience at this level was relatively short-lived. And although my skills may yet be described as “advanced,” I fear I will never again ski with the abandon this title suggests. I now have a family with young children, a concerned wife, and a half-million dollar life insurance policy, lest I forget my place. I am in my 30’s and beginning to feel the effects of jumping off roofs and cliffs. A sprained ankle from playing basketball; a strained shoulder from tossing my daughter in the air; and the double-black diamond high drop on Elevator Shaft starts to look like a sure trip to the hospital.
Ah, well. I shall retire to the blue squares and adrenaline-producing speeds of the Intermediate runs, and the single black diamonds of the occasional steep and fast showboat run. And I shall work on my reverse shoulder turns, knowing that fitness and grace are hand in hand. I will also continue to seek and destroy bumps, cornices, and steep powder-filled bowls, for as long as breath is in me.
Expert
Warren Miller's movies are filled with expert skiers. These are the rare birds that fly with easy grace from a helicopter, skis together, backs straight and knees bent, out into the open air and drop with arms outstretched into a waist-deep field of powder at the top of a forbidding mountain. They are shown outrunning avalanches, shooting off 60-foot cliffs, and landing every acrobatic jump with aplomb. Most of us grow old (read: 40-plus) before ever graduating to this elite level, but those who reach Expert have reached skiing nirvana. No hill is too steep, or rocky, or peppered with trees to deter the expert skier. They are admired from the chairlift as they amble effortlessly through a lethal mogul field or drop into a steep bowl from the high ridge, the one you have to hike to. Broken skis and broken limbs are of no consequence to the Expert.
In the Winter Olympics and the World Cup of racing, the greats of skiing are displayed for all the world to see. Jonny Mosely, the mogul king, has shown us that it is possible to negotiate a nightmarish field of apparently random bumps with easy grace and hard piston-like legs. The aerial artists who perform “jelly rolls” and inverted helicopters with a full twist are the daredevil elite of the skiing world. But on the slopes of every ski resort are another class of expert: The Ski Patrol.
Nothing is more beautiful to an above-average skier as a ski patrol officer in his or her yellow or red Gore-Tex™ jacket, making perfect turns while scouring the slopes for out-of-bounds intermediates. These heroes of the hills are often trained paramedics, with catlike reflexes and razor-sharp intuition. Providing comfort and safety to the masses, they flit about on the latest demo equipment while joking gently with the lift operators.
A harrowing experience raised its head while I was riding the Blue chairlift at night at Mount Hood Meadows in the early 1980’s. The weather had degenerated into a Northwestern phenomenon known as “freezing rain.” The wind had picked up, and the chairlift was beginning to sway erratically. Fear gripped my partner and me as I began to pray we would make it to the top of the lift safely. I promised myself this would be the last run. As we swung out over the second-highest area of the chairlift (about 60 feet off the ground; the highest span is about 100 feet up), the cables ground to a screeching halt on the lift towers. "Pop. Pop. Pop. Skreeeeeeek."
If one has never heard the sound of a lift cable stretching as it forcibly stops, one cannot know the peculiar panic of that moment. In sheer desperation, I prepared to kick off my skis and jump free, lest the cable snap above my head. From that height, I expected the skis to become razor-sharp rapiers if the lift chair were to fall straight to earth. In an alternate scenario, the cable could snap farther up the hill, or even on the return side, and we might be gently lowered to the ground.
I clung to the poles suspending our small perch as the chair swung to and fro in the icy wetness. There was a last shudder of activity from the lift tower, and then silence. For what seemed like an eternity, we swayed in the freezing breeze, waiting for the lift to start back up. They must be fixing the engine in the lift house, I surmised. Finally it became clear that we weren’t going to move. And then I heard voices from far below. There was the ski patrol, moving up the line, lowering stranded and frozen skiers to the hillside below by way of a little seat at the end of a rope. When they came to our chair, they swung a long line over the cable in front of us with a tiny metal anchor on a short pole at the end.
"Slide it under your butt and jump off the chair." The clear call of the red-jacketed ski patrol came up through the night.
"Yeah, right," I thought. But there seemed no other way down. I called back: "Do you want me to kick off my skis?"
"No, just keep them on. They will stabilize you on the way down."
In one of the most unnatural acts of my life, I scuttled onto the tiny seat and pushed myself off the chairlift. Suddenly I was dangling 60 feet up in space, clinging to a steel broomstick and swinging in the icy wind. My heart leaped into my throat as I frantically surveyed the scene. There, far below, were the heroic members of the Mt. Hood Ski Patrol. Wedged against the hill, two of them lowered me to the ground as a third looked on and talked me down.
Once on the snow, he asked me if I could ski down. I thought I could, and said so.
Safe again in the lodge, we were given hot cocoa and checked for frostbite and hypothermia. If it weren’t for the daring expertise and training of expert skiers, in love with the mountain and primed for service, that night on Mount Hood might have been much worse.
Conclusion
When a child first grabs the rope tow, someone really ought to tell the parents about the compulsion that will be embedded in his tender young mind. It may crowd out all else, becoming an obsession that threatens to overtake all other thoughts. So deeply in my psyche is the mountain and the snow, that when I lived in the Bay Area and took the occasional trip to Tahoe to try my skills at Alpine Meadows or Squaw Valley, it only fostered in me a desire to move closer to the mountains. Since I was unsuccessful at landing a job in Roseville, I began to pine for the Cascades, and in 2001 completed the cycle. My family and I now live in Saint Helens, Oregon. From Highway 30 en route to Portland I can see three mountains, including Mount Hood. Skiing is two and a half hours away, and I’m thinking about moving to the other side of town to be at a little higher elevation. Bring it on!
Documentation
For documentation, I have attached some pictures of myself skiing and wakeboarding (an off-season variant of skiing) at various times in recent history.
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