I Only Fell Three Times!

A Lady of a Certain Age Tries Skiing

A few weeks ago I asked you all if I should try skiing while I was at Lake Tahoe to teach. You mostly said yes. And so I did.

An embarrassing confession:

Growing up in Chicago, I knew a lot of people who went off on ski vacations, or they’d take ski lessons at the one ski place in Wisconsin and come back wearing lift tickets, which was Officially Cool. And the whole time—every single time they came back with sunburned foreheads—I assumed they were doing the same stuff I saw in the Olympics. Not the jumps, maybe, but I imagined nearly vertical slopes, terrifying speeds, that constant whoosh-whoosh-whoosh where they turn their skis twice a second. I imagined runs that lasted ten seconds, max, and crashes that could kill you.

I seriously thought you all were doing this.

The thing is, the kind of skiing that normal people do is never depicted on TV. It took three experiences for everything to click:
1) A friend told a story about night skiing back to a lodge with a cup of hot cocoa in his hand and I was hugely confused.
2) I was in Sun Valley, Idaho in the summer of ‘21, and a woman in her 80s told a story about her doctor asking if she’d had any falls, and she laughed and said “besides skiing?”… To my confusion, she did not appear to be in a full-body cast.
3) While I was in Sun Valley, I watched the delightful 1941 movie Sun Valley Serenade (more on that later) and saw some fairly normal recreational skiing.

Sonja Henie and John Payne, being normal on skis

And then finally I was like, Waaaaait a second.

I’m out in Tahoe most winters for the low-residency MFA where I teach (UNR at Lake Tahoe; it’s amazing and you should join us!), and it seemed silly not to be taking advantage of some of the best snow in the world.

So, despite being 44 and terrified, I did it.

I signed up for a group lesson at Diamond Peak (ridiculously close to campus), but no one else showed, so I had a 2-hour private lesson with a guy named Pete who gamely tolerated my complete neurosis on the first three runs.

And… I loved it. I seriously did. I’m not about to drive up to Wisconsin for lessons, but maybe next time I’ll get to Tahoe a couple days early.

It felt intuitive, after those first three runs, and once I fell and realized it wasn’t terrible (so that’s why an 80-year-old woman could fall in the snow with impunity!), I started to relax and seriously enjoy myself.

The Only Thing I Didn’t Love:

I have ridiculously narrow feet. My feet might as well be ice skates. This means that basically never in my life are my feet actually fully surrounded and supported by shoes. When clogs were popular, I’d occasionally try some on, and my foot would take up about half the lateral space. I was sad, because I wanted clogs. They looked fun and easy. But I could sooner wear canoes.

So, rental ski boots… not a great experience for me. I think maybe next time I could wear like seventeen pairs of socks? Any advice would be most welcome.

More About Sun Valley Serenade:

It’s got one of the most delightful musical sequences in film history.

What you’re about to watch (because you MUST click, for your own good) is the premier of Glenn Miller’s “Chattanooga Choo Choo." It starts with his orchestra, and then Tex Beneke steps out and sings with The Modernaires. Then Dorothy Dandridge and the Nicholas Brothers pop out of a train and absolutely steal the show.

Part of the movie’s plot is that the orchestra has lost its soloist, and so they end up with Sonja Henie doing a skating routine as a substitute. Which is confounding, because while sure, you no longer have your soloist, you have Dorothy effing Dandridge and the Nicholas Brothers just standing by, no big deal? Dorothy Dandridge is literally never mentioned, and never seen again.

Anyway, here you go: