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Wharton: Dusting off old skis good for soul With another ski season here, I feel like paraphrasing Shakespeare: "To ski or not to ski. That is the question." When I was a kid, the answer was no. Money was too tight to buy ski gear and lift passes. That changed when I married in my early 20s. My wife, Gayen, began cross country skiing. I hated our first outing, largely because I veered off the trail into deep snow and got stuck up to my waist. But I learned to enjoy our frequent outings. That changed when we introduced our children to the sport. It would take us an hour to get them ready, another 30 minutes to strap on the gear and the next two hours putting it on and off again while cajoling them up the hill. I finally tried downhill skiing on New Year's Eve 1979. My brother Derk, who has a sick sense of humor, talked me into an outing on Mary's Hill at Brighton. He told me he would teach me but, after two runs, left in frustration. I knew I was in trouble when a lift attendant looked down at my ancient skis and leather boots and told me that a similar outfit was hanging on the wall in the nearby bar. I spent the day falling off the lift every time I tried to dismount, having close encounters with trees and other skiers and pulling myself up from falls. Still, I stuck with skiing, because of a need to cover the sport for work and because I enjoyed it in a perverse sort of way. Yet, I was never very good. Though I have had lessons, to this day I basically snowplow my way down beginner and intermediate hills. It's my way of surviving. Ironically, I quit skiing when The Tribune assigned me to cover the Olympic Alpine skiing events. It was a busy time and, for reasons I can't explain, I just gave up. Gayen's terminal illness during the 2003-2004 winter gave me no motivation to strap on the cross country skis, either. That changed again last year. My fiancee, Nancy, hadn't skied for at least 10 years. I wanted to write about the beginneroriented Wolf Mountain - the former Nordic Valley - so I dusted off my old skis and Nancy rented a pair. Though neither of us skied particularly well, we enjoyed the experience so much that we vowed to get on the slopes again, something I did with mixed results on Alta's beginner runs with my 6-year-old granddaughter. There are concerns that my overly heavy 56-year-old body risks injury on the slopes. When I fall, it is difficult to pull myself back up. Yet, on that night at Wolf Mountain, as the fog lifted from Pineview Reservoir and Christmas lights twinkled in the little valley below, what few skills I possess returned to create a thoroughly enjoyable experience. While you won't see me at Jupiter Bowl or Wild Rustler anytime soon, I'm excited about the coming ski season and ready to
give the sport another chance.
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